July 28th, 2009

HealthPoint PA readers, I hope you’re not surprised when I write that very little, if anything at all, has changed with the budget since yesterday.  All I really have to report is what the major budget players are saying about each other, and some ideas that are being thrown around.

Yesterday, for the first time, Rendell said that he’s considering a stopgap budget– a funding of basic state operations for some period of time, allowing state employees to be paid and vendors to keep open facilities in danger of closing.  His stopgap proposal, he said, could come sometime in the middle of this week.

House and Senate Republican leaders said they would CONSIDER it, but only if the negotiations process continues to go abysmally and the stopgap doesn’t spend much money. 

At his press conference yesterday, Rendell also announced that he cut down his own proposed budget even more.  He says his plan is now at $28 billion.

Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, however, says he doesn’t quite get that claim– that counting the latest round of cuts Rendell gave to him on Friday “the governor’s proposal is at $28.5 billion or $28.6 billion. … I have not seen anything from the governor’s office … at $28 billion.”

So now let’s get to the more fun stuff – the smacktalk!

Rendell says that he, House and Senate Dems, and House Repubs all agree that an income tax increase is needed, with the Senate Repubs being the ones causing the problems.  He said,“We are very far apart” in the budget talks, “because … only one of the five has failed to get real,” Rendell said. “Only one of the five is living in a fantasy land … only one of the five has refused to move,” and accept taxes must be hiked.

House Leader Rep. Sam Smith, however, says that that’s false– he says House Repubs are with the Senate Repubs.

Meanwhile, the GOP put out a press release saying that Rendell’s witholding of state employee paychecks is an attempt to “ram his fiscally irresponsible budget down the throats of taxpayers.”

That’s the best of the smack talk.  One final note, which is on the budget conference committee that was supposed to be formed yesterday.  This morning, the Senate announced its members for the committee.  They are: Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R-Delaware), and Appropriations Committee Chairmen Jake Corman (R-Centre) and Jay Costa (D-Allegheny).

The House still has to appoint its members.  They say they’ll probably do that tomorrow.