The big story in Harrisburg this week is the budget proposal being introduced in the Senate. The proposal is written by the Republicans and will be voted on Wednesday. The budget has no tax increases, does not take any money from the Rainy Day Fund and makes a lot of cuts, including all of the cuts the Governor already made. The current budget that was passed last summer included $28.3 Billion of expenditures. The Governor trimmed $500 Million over the course of the year since revenues declined leaving a final budget ending on June 30th of $27.8 Billion. The budget to be voted on Wednesday has a total expenditure of $27.3 Billion. This is first time in decades that a budget would be less than the previous year’s. I am already receiving emails from constituents concerned about cuts to budget lines that they care about. I am not supportive of the decisions made on each line of the budget, but the overall number is what is necessary. Things could get even worse by the end of June and more cuts may be necessary. Time will tell where we need to be financially and if the people elected to do the right thing have the fortitude to do it.

- John

This entry was posted on Monday, May 4th, 2009 at 11:42 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.