By Dick Miler:
WE.CONNECT.DOTS: Why is a single Republican state representative doing the job of the Democratic leadership in the PA House and Senate?
Rep. Eugene DiGirolamo (R-Bucks County), chair of the House Human Service Committee, has floated a 2015-16 budget proposal somewhere in between the two versions proposed so far.
Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, was the choice of a majority of voters at the last November election. Sitting Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican, became the first PA chief executive to fail to be re-elected to a second four-year term. Wolf’s friends claim voters chose the Central Pennsylvania businessman because he promised to restore state funding to public education. Others, trying to be more objective, maintain voters kicked Corbett out of office because he had done a terrible job.
As must be the process, Democrat Wolf presents his budget to a legislature solidly in control of the Republicans for ratification. Huge tax increases in his budget are necessary, the Governor says, to correct all the past shortcomings of his predecessor.
Meanwhile, the Republican leaders of the legislature contends their party was handed solid control of both Houses of the General Assembly because of their work with Corbett in either holding the tax line or even cutting here and there.
No surprise that Gov. Wolf’s budget gets little attention. The Republicans not only create their own budget with no tax increases, they officially adopt same and send it to the Governor for his signature.
No surprise, Gov. Wolf vetoes the GOP version of this year’s spending plan. In a rare move, Wolf rejects every single line of the thick document. That was three weeks ago and it is anyone’s guess when either side will blink.
Enter DiGirolamo with a budget somewhere in-between. From a base of 3.07 per cent, Wolf would take the personal income tax to 3.7 per cent. DiGirolamo would cut the hike back to 3.32 per cent.
Wolf wants to bump the six per cent sales tax to 6.6 per cent and extend it over many more items. DiGirolamo proposes extending the sales tax over a smaller list of new items.
No surprise, the Democratic minority block of lawmakers in the House and Senate remains “out to lunch.” This is now the third consecutive governor who has had little input from Democrat legislators. They believe their only task in Harrisburg is to get re-elected. To get re-elected they must stand for nothing and never, never support a tax increase. As they continue to become a smaller and smaller minority, less is expected. They are happy to oblige.
Democratic lawmakers have a role in the budget process . . . if they so choose.
Democrat legislative leadership should have underwritten a compromise version of the budget. Someone from the ranks needs to tell the Governor that his election was not a mandate to impose the largest tax increase in the history of the Commonwealth.
If Gov. Wolf had captured such a mandate, then his victory would have been accompanied by gains in the legislature. Instead, they lost approximately ten more seats in the House and three more in the state Senate.
There is no way that Gov. Wolf will get his own way on every facet of the 2015-16 budget. A significant number of GOP lawmakers will not vote for a tax increase of any type or size under any circumstance. They subscribe to the edict that the best government is no government. They also show no remorse for forcing local real estate tax increases to compensate for insufficient appropriations at the state level.
Even a more moderate budget than proposed by Gov. Wolf will get just a handful of Republican votes. There are signs that not every Democrat lawmaker is a vote for any tax increases. This means Republicans would have to provide more votes for a compromise budget than the bare minimum.
Republican leadership refuses to call legislation to a vote unless a majority of their membership favors the bill. That may not happen this year on bills for higher state income and sales taxes.
More likely is a deal whereby Wolf gets an extraction tax on oil and gas production and the GOP gets privatization of state stores. Polls show neither side would suffer extensive damage from this compromise.
Bottom Line: Gerrymandering in the apportionment process after the last census created more legislators on both sides with little loyalty to their Party. DiGirolamo, because he was the first to set forth a compromise budget, is unlikely to gather up many crossover votes.
Bottom Line: Republican gerrymandering allows them to get 45% of the votes cast and control 70% of the legislature. They want to bankrupt the state and propose gimmick budgets then let them; they’ll own it the next election.