Gov. Wolf To Make Budget Announcement

“I’m calling on our legislatures to get back to Harrisburg, to get back to the work they left unfinished last week”, Wolf said.

The line-item veto exercised by the governor will allow spending of around $23.3 billion, compared with the $30.3 billion that was in the Republicans’ budget proposal.

As Governor Wolf has warned for months, Pennsylvania is facing a massive structural budget deficit as a result of years of Republican budgets that were out of balance. “We’re now at a point where I don’t want to hold the children of Pennsylvania hostage for the inability of folks here in Harrisburg to get the job done”.

“In doing this, I am expressing the outrage that all of us should feel about the garbage the Republican legislative leaders have tried to dump on us”, Wolf said Tuesday morning, reading from a speech.

Although Wolf isn’t talking about his plans, he took to Facebook on Thursday to blast “extremist Republicans” and urge supporters to “continue our fight for historic education funding”.

The budget bill does not provide schools, counties and human services agencies with money to pay for the millions it has cost them to borrow money while the stalemate has persisted. That plan would require up to $1 billion in unspecified tax increases.

Besides signing or vetoing it, Wolf has other options. It includes hundreds of millions less than what Wolf wanted for schools and social services.

But the agreement seemed to collapse in the House just before Christmas, with that chamber and the Senate sparring over which taxes to raise and which changes to make to the state’s two biggest pension funds. The legislature left for vacation without passing appropriations bills for state-related universities, Penn State, University of Pittsburgh, Lincoln University, Temple University, and the Penn School of Veterinary Science, and other “non-preferred” institutions. Let’s not kid ourselves; we still need a budget.

Even if Wolf signs the budget bill, questions about it remain unanswered. That compromise budget actually passed the Republican dominated Senate by a vote of 43-7.