July 30th, 2009

“We may be left with a Ricardo Montalban look-alike because they’re on ‘Fantasy Island.’”

Those are the latest words on the Senate GOP from Gov. Ed Rendell, who contends that the Senate GOP’s budget expectations are unreal.   Earlier this week, he said that the caucus is living in a “fantasy land.”  He continued that image yesterday, saying “They have to leave this little … I expect that one day [Senate Majority Leader] Dominic [Pileggi] will bring Ricardo Montalban in to see me” [Montalban played Mr. Roarke,the character who oversaw the island where everyone got what they wanted on “Fantasy Island” ].  He continued: ““And you know, … oh, he’s dead?  Even Dominic can’t do that. And the little guy’s gone too. … We may be left with a Ricardo Montalban look-alike because they’re on ‘Fantasy Island.’  They have to get real. There has to be revenue, and there has to be a spend number that House Democrats can live with and that I will live with.”

As HealthPoint told you in a BUDGET EXTRA! yesterday, things are getting messier by the day.  The conference committee’s first meeting yesterday was pretty much a joke– the majority of the time they spent battling like little boys in a newly completed tree house “No Girlz Allowed” club, aruging over things like who was going to be the chairman.  Would there be one?  Would there be two co-chairs?  And who would they be!?

You know what?  In my eyes, it’s not even a conference committee anymore.  It IS a tree house club… I’m going to run with that.

They also argued about which departments they would have testify before themselves first.  They didn’t really iron that out–they left those decisions up to their staff members to deal with– so there are no upcoming testimonies to report about yet.

 The childish antics continue from there.  Yesterday, nobody from the Rendell admin even WANTED to enter the tree house, and stopped taking phone calls from the Republicans all together. 

So AGAIN, aside from what I just pointed out, there’s not much actual BUDGET talk/decisions to relay yet today.  

We’ll end with the news that Rendell is standing by his promise to line-item veto out a skeleton budget from SB 850 on Monday, in order to be able to pay state workers.  In light of what’s going on right now, HealthPoint is going to take that as a beam of good news, at least for the workers.