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A Necessary First Step:Governor Wolf’s Proposal to Provide Adequate and Equitable Funding of Pennsylvania Schools
Click here to download or read the paper full screen. Continue reading
Author: Marc Stier
ANALYSIS: Governor Wolf’s Proposed 2020-21 State Budget
The Pennsylvania Budget & Policy Center’s analysis of Governor Tom Wolf’s proposed state budget for FY2020-21 will be presented as a webinar at 9 am this Monday, March 23. The presenters will be PBPC director, Marc Stier, and PBPC’s senior policy analyst, Diana Polson, along with Stephen Herzenberg, the executive director of the Keystone Research Center. In addition to providing an overview of the governor’s budget proposal, the webinar will also include some of PBPC’s ideas about how PA should be responding to the coronavirus pandemic and how the state budget may need to be adjusted in light of a recession that seems imminent. You can read PBPC’s COVID-19 proposed action plan “The Moral Equivalent of Wartime Equality: Public Policies in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Pennsylvania.” Continue reading
A minimum wage hike would reverse 40-year pay stagnation for working people
Originally published in The Morning Call on March 11, 2021 Raising the minimum wage is about helping low-income workers do better — but not just that. It is about changing the rules of our economy so that we all do better, now and in the future. To all do better we must reverse the 40-year trend that has seen skyrocketing incomes and wealth for the owners and executives of the largest corporations while income for working people and the middle class has been stagnant. This transformation was not the necessary result of a free market economy. The economy is a human creation subject to the rules we choose. Political and legal changes made at the behest of the corporate elite deliberately tilted the economy to their advantage and against the working and middle classes, as well as small businesses.Activists near the Capitol in Washington on Feb. 25 appeal for a… Continue reading
2021 Pennsylvania Budget Analysis Webinar
With Diana Polson Click here to download or read full screen. Continue reading
A minimum wage hike would reverse 40-year pay stagnation for working people
Originally published in The Morning Call on March 11, 2021 Raising the minimum wage is about helping low-income workers do better — but not just that. It is about changing the rules of our economy so that we all do better, now and in the future. To all do better we must reverse the 40-year trend that has seen skyrocketing incomes and wealth for the owners and executives of the largest corporations while income for working people and the middle class has been stagnant. This transformation was not the necessary result of a free market economy. The economy is a human creation subject to the rules we choose. Political and legal changes made at the behest of the corporate elite deliberately tilted the economy to their advantage and against the working and middle classes, as well as small businesses. What were those changes? First, lawmakers allowed the value of the… Continue reading
Analysis of the 2021-22 Pennsylvania Executive Budget
With Diana Polson and Stephen Herzenberg Click here to print or read full screen. Continue reading
A Guide to the $1.9 Trillion American Rescue Plan: UPDATE with PA-Specific Data
The American Rescue Plan, as put forward by President Biden and about to be approved by the U.S. Congress, is a bold and necessary action—not just to restore the American economy in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic but to make it far more just. Here we point to some of the leading features of the plan with estimates of how many people in Pennsylvania will benefit from it. (PA estimates are from the Senate version of the legislation. Links are to the sources of our information.) Most notably, the legislation takes a major step forward in making health insurance through the ACA more affordable and includes a welcome expansion of child tax credits, which for the first time would give low- and moderate-income families in our country the kind of support that can be found in many other countries. And, at one stroke, the legislation would ensure that… Continue reading
The minimum wage was created during the Great Depression. We need to raise it during the Pandemic Recession
Originally published at the PA Capital-Star on March 7, 2021 Opponents of raising the minimum wage seem to have an inexhaustible supply of concerns which they repeat no matter how often we present evidence that refutes them. The latest one is the claim that we cannot raise the minimum wage during the COVID-19 recession. Raising the minimum wage during a recession, they say, will stall our recovery. This might sound plausible for a second—or until one remembers that the minimum wage was created during the Great Depression by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA). After a slow recovery from the Great Depression, the economy went into reverse in 1937 and the beginning of 1938. The reason is clear. In 1936, President Franklin Roosevelt started to listen to orthodox economists worried about the budget deficit. Taxes were raised, government spending was cut and the U.S. government had a balanced budget in 1937. The Federal Reserve raised interest rats as well, hurting the economy. But the economy suffered. Unemployment, which was still high… Continue reading
The Trouble with TABOR
UPDATED April 12: The Republican leadership of the House of Representative is poised to bring a dangerous constitutional amendment, the so-called Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR), HB71 tomorrow, April 13, 2022. This amendment, which has been championed in states all over the country by the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council, would limit the growth in PA General Fund spending to the previous year’s level adjusted for the sum of (1) the average percentage change in the U.S. Consumer Price Index for all urban consumers (CPI-U) over the preceding three calendar years plus (2) the average of the percentage change in the resident population for the preceding three calendar years. Adopting this constitutional amendment would be a terrible mistake for many reasons. General Fund spending has not been growing faster than TABOR rates. First, even if one believes that the growth in state spending should be restrained, it is unnecessary. Over… Continue reading
Initial Response to Gov. Wolf’s Proposed 2021-22 PA State Budget | Thursday, February 4, 2021
The Pennsylvania Budget & Policy Center’s director Marc Stier and senior policy analyst Diana Polson provide an initial overview of Gov. Wolf’s proposed FY 2021-22 state budget, highlighting some of the governor’s key initiatives & priorities and identifying some of the challenges that are likely to impact budget negotiations. Marc & Diana respond to questions posed by representatives of various nonpartisan advocacy organizations, who participated in a Zoom meeting on Thursday, February 4, 2021. Continue reading