The first place that I went to in Harrisburg this morning was my new hotel. I stayed at the same place for the two plus years that I have been in office. The building is mostly apartments with the first two floors used as hotel rooms. New owners decided last month that there would be no more hotel stays, just long term leases. With me just taking actual expenses and not the per diem payments offered to Senators, I can’t enter into an agreement like that. My new home away from home is a little further away from the capitol but is nice. I’ll get used to it. We did a few bills today on the floor which is proof that we can do more than just budget work this time of the year. And speaking of the budget, the shortfall projections just went up from 2.9 Billion to 3.2 Billion dollars. The Governor and some of the House Democrats still talk about restoring the cuts that the Senate made and still act like they do not want to significantly raise taxes. It can’t be done. Things can be shifted and changed here and there, but you can’t make up this kind of shortfall without a 30% increase in the Personal Income Tax or a larger raise in some other broad based tax. A tax increase would be bad for our economy and totally unnecessary. The Democrats should stop playing games and get down to business.
- John
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