State Sen. Jake Corman, R-Centre County, who is chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, was in York County last week to talk about what a great plan Republicans have for the state budget, as opposed to the lousy one Gov. Ed Rendell is backing.
Rendell and the Senate Republicans have to find a compromise they can both live with before July 1, the deadline for a new state budget.
Basically, Rendell is talking about a $29 billion spending plan, while the Republicans are backing a $27.3 billion budget. The difference may seem proportionately small, but keep in mind that the vast majority of spending under the state budget is mandatory.
I started covering state politics the year Rendell, a Democrat, took office. And every year since then, he's feuded with Republicans over the state budget.
This year, however, the feud seems to be happening earlier and more publicly than it did in the past. Corman said that's because the economy will make this a particularly difficult budget year.
While I'm sure that's true, I suspect there's another reason as well.
When I first began covering state government, the lawmakers habitually held an all-night bargaining session before the budget was due.
This was done in the name of brinksmanship. The Democrats and the Republicans would show up at the State Capitol with their different agendas, and wait to see who would blink first before their deadline arrived.
Then came 2005. During that all-night session, the legislators voted themselves a pay raise in the wee hours of the morning. Members of the public were so outraged that the lawmakers eventually had to revoke that pay raise the following year.
Though nobody was particularly happy with the pay raise vote itself, the hour at which it occurred really ticked people off. For a lot of Pennsylvanians who didn't know about the annual all-night sessions, it sounded like the lawmakers sneaked into the State Capitol under cover of darkness for the sole purpose of fattening their wallets at taxpayer expense.
Since then, unsurprisingly, the lawmakers have ditched those all-night sessions. Personally, I wasn't sad to see them go. As I'm sure you can imagine, they were pretty grueling to cover.
One advantage to them, however, was that the encroaching deadline forced the sides to reach a settlement. Now that they don't occur anymore, I imagine that all the factions must puzzle out ways to make someone with a different agenda relent.
And the best way to do that would be to get the public on your side, which I suspect is why Sen. Corman was here last week touting the GOP's spending plan directly to a roomful of York County's movers and shakers. I wouldn't be surprised if Rendell himself or a proxy shows up sometime before July 1 to tout some wonderful program that the Republican budget plan would hurt.
Republicans claim that their plan is prudent, given the economy. Rendell claims that it makes too many harmful cuts from necessary programs.
Which argument will win out? I guess we'll see come July 1.
Leave a comment