June 29th, 2009

Legislative leaders from all four caucuses will meet with Gov. Rendell this afternoon in attempt to come closer to a budget deal, reports The Patriot-News. 

Currently the Senate Republicans and Rendell are still far from an agreement, as Republicans are opposed to Rendell’s proposed tax increase and Rendell and Democrats think the Senate GOP’s program cuts are too deep.

Legislative leaders met Wednesday and then met with Rendell on Thursday. The meetings were most notable for the fact that all sides were talking and got a clear idea of how much they hate one another’s proposals.

On Friday, Rendell followed up with his long-awaited list of $500 million in cuts to his original $29 billion budget proposal, giving legislative leaders and their staff the weekend to review before today’s meeting. Most of the cuts were offset by what the governor called mandatory increases in welfare programs caused by the recession.