Legislators refuse to hold hearings on Sandusky, Cash for Kids scandals — why should legislature now act responsibly to pass a budget?
This year’s stalled budget process again drives home the point that Pennsylvania government and its legislature is broken, and has been broken for years.
Once again the state’s over-paid and under-achieving legislature will almost certainly fail to produce a budget on time.
Pennsylvania’s constitution simply states:
“Annually, at the times set by law, the Governor shall submit to the General Assembly: … A balanced operating budget for the ensuing fiscal year setting forth in detail (with) proposed expenditures classified by department or agency and by program and … estimated revenues from all sources.”
Earlier this year newly elected Gov. Tom Wolf submitted a timely budget, which the legislature now refuses to act upon in a responsible, timely manner.
So what’s the problem?
It’s certainly not that Pennsylvania’s clown car legislature isn’t paid enough to get the job done.
Pennsylvania’s legislators are the second highest-paid in the nation, having repeatedly voted themselves pay raises for their sub-standard, part-time work.
Pennsylvania legislators currently rake in $84,012 a year, plus a $157 per day per diem for expenses just for showing up, even when, as now, they do nothing.
Only California legislators get paid more, at $90,526 a year.
In reality, Pennsylvania legislators take in more than $100,000 per year, when you count per diem and benefits, including the gold-plated health insurance and pension packages they have also voted themselves.
Of course, as others have pointed out, Pennsylvania legislators will continue to get paid even while they stand around and stall this year’s budget, and refuse to pay everyone else.
The budget impasse of 2009 dragged on into October of that year, though some details weren’t ironed out until almost the end of 2009, if then. Like most years for the last decade, there were lots of budgetary tricks and cheats, like not making payments to the state workers’ pension funds.
‘So why solve this year’s budget crisis this year?’ legislators must be thinking.
‘Why not just carry it over to next year?’
No budget, and no hearings for Sandusky or Cash for Kids scandals
As many Pennsylvanians painfully know, it’s not only the state budget that our legislators fail to responsibly address.
Both the Sandusky and Cash for Kids scandals — atrocities against kids that have rightfully attracted national condemnation and outrage — have remarkably yet to receive a single hearing in the Pennsylvania legislature.
Article 1 of the Pennsylvania constitution reads:
“All men are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent and indefeasible rights, among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty, of acquiring, possessing and protecting property and reputation, and of pursuing their own happiness.”
It’s hard to imagine how kids victimized by Pennsylvania government in recent years have been “enjoying their freedom, life and liberty” while being raped and sold down the river to owners of private detention facilities.
Yet, in the Jerry Sandusky case, an unknown number of kids were raped and otherwise sexually abused while state employees of the Department of Public Welfare and Children and Youth Services for years looked the other way and enabled Sandusky.
And what about the Second Mile charity, and Penn State University, both supposedly overseen by state government? As yet, not a single legislative hearing about what went mightily wrong with state government here.
Thousands of children were sold down the river to owners of private detention facilities in Luzerne County, even while Jerry Sandusky was raping kids. These heinous criminal practices in Luzerne County courts went on for years, unstopped by Pennsylvania’s notably corrupt and scandalized state Supreme Court.
One of the owners of the private detention facilities that bribed judges was the son of state Supreme Court Chief Justice Stephen Zappala. Did these or other family relationships cause the state supreme court to take no action for more than a year after it had been informed of gross violations of due process by a juvenile justice law center?
There obviously must and should be thorough legislative hearings to get to the bottom of those questions. Any other legislature in the union certainly would undertake such inquiries. But not Pennsylvania.
And so there have been none.
Who has the legislature been protecting, if not insiders, and criminals?
Certainly not our commonwealth’s kids.
State press: clown car walk-alongs
Every clown car needs clowns to walk beside it, because not all of the happy clowns can fit in the car.
In Pennsylvania, the walk-along clowns include reporters working for our moribund state newspapers. Those newspapers for decades have been cheering and abetting the legislature’s dangerous and precipitous decline.
Two of the state’s oldest newspapers — the Harrisburg Patriot-News and the Philadelphia Inquirer — have been willing handmaidens and apologists of this political corruption for decades. Both newspapers are arguably part of the business-as-usual problem, and certainly a large part of the denial.
A recent article in the Harrisburg Patriot laughably mischaracterized the legislature’s inability to pass a timely budget this year as a difference of “political philosophies.”
Oh really? What known political philosophy is the Patriot-News talking about?
What political philosophy short-changes kids in schools, and reneges on promises to old-age pensioners?
What political philosophy endangers kids but protects wealthy gas drillers?
Is this the same political philosophy that allows kids to be raped, and sold down the river, without a single legislative hearing?
That’s not a “political philosophy.”
That’s simply over-paid and over-indulged legislators refusing to do their jobs — to protect and serve the rest of us.
Perhaps it’s best if Pennsylvania government does come to a standstill this year.
Hopefully fewer kids and innocent citizens will be hurt while Pennsylvania state government is shut down.
At least there might be fewer highly paid clowns standing around and laughing.
Pennsylvania gets labeled a “Democratic, pro-union” state and yet the GOP has controlled the legislature for how long? Funny how a party that gets only 40% of the actual votes gets to control 70% of the legislature.
Sandusky and Cash For Kids: Republican cronies are behind these scandals you wouldn’t expect them to investigate their own den of thieves and child molestors would you?
If your interested in getting active Pennsylvania legislators then vote these stalemate republicans out of office and let’s get a democratic congress in the state.
This may come as a complete shock to you, but the voters elected the legislature you despise. Many voters believe that you can’t continue to raise taxes on workers and business. I suggest instead a 10% tax on campaign ads and removing the tax exemptions on PACS.
Simple solution. The PEOPLE should campaign for a new legislature with this amendment to the state constitution; if the legislature fails to pass a budget, they will not receive ANY pay for that year AND the following. Further, any pay they receive outside their work as legislators would be subject to a 75% tax until a budget is passed.
Who thinks that’s a BAD idea? (Besides you, Senator…)