It is interesting to see how the budget process unfolds. Last evening the Governor had a press conference and took his shots at the Republicans in the Senate. He claims that we did not start to work on the budget until three weeks before the deadline of June 30th and that our leadership has been “mean spirited”. From what I was part of, we didn’t start this process until about three weeks ago or so and were unprepared to offer viable alternative solutions to many of the Governor’s proposals. In this case, I believe that the Governor has a point. I have been told that the process always works this way, I don’t like it. On the other issue, from what I heard, the Governor is the one who has been mean spirited. His demeanor during negotiations is legendary. It’s filled with dramatics and foul language. The truth is that he would not even meet with the Senate leadership until this week and even then, not often enough, leaving him little room to criticize. The bottom line is that the Governor presented a number of big government, tax and spend programs in his budget address and the Republicans in the Senate don’t want to give them to him as is. Some of the programs may make it through the General Assembly in some fashion and some won’t. He will not negotiate the budget separately without addressing the new programs. He is holding the budget hostage and willing to lay off state employees and slow down the economy of this state in order to force programs, that we in Pennsylvania can’t afford, down our throats. This is not a good way to do business. We need to get the budget settled and make decisions on his new programs later.
- John
RSS: