Category: Pennsylvania Budget

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Initial Response to Gov. Wolf’s Proposed 2021-22 PA State Budget | Thursday, February 4, 2021

  By PA Budget and Policy Center, Pennsylvania Budget, Video

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

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Statement on Budget Plan Approved by the House Appropriations Committee

  By Pennsylvania Budget, Statements

Originally published by KRC-PBPC here. The budget approved by the Republican members of the House Appropriations Committee does basically what we expected. Most of the budget is flat-funded with increases to meet Medical Assistance caseloads and a few other mandatory expenditures. While it is an important achievement that there are no deep cuts to education and human services in the budget, the budget does not meet the needs of Pennsylvanians who are suffering from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic crisis it created. Front-line workers; small businesses, especially in the hospitality and entertainment industries; those who are threatened with losing their homes; and many other Pennsylvanians are not getting the support they need from the state. The budget is balanced with close to $5 billion in one-time revenues: CARES Act funds; enhanced Medical Assistance funding from the federal government (which may not be forthcoming); transfers from special funds and the… Continue reading

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Pa. is in the throes of a COVID-19 recession. Wolf, lawmakers need to step up for working families

  By COVID-19, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Budget, Published op-eds

Originally published at the PA Capital-Star November 17, 2020 By Marc Stier No matter where we live, what we look like, whether we are native–born or immigrants, or whether we are struggling or getting by, the COVID-19 recession is a threat to all of us. We need the state government to do more for families and small businesses to meet that threat. Yet the recession will cost the state at least $3.3 billion in revenues—and perhaps more—over two years. Squaring this circle would be difficult at any time, but the General Assembly must act by Nov. 30 when the stop-gap budget enacted in May, covering about about half of the General Fund,  runs out. Democratic and Republican senators appear close to a compromise that avoids a budget impasse at this dangerous time even as it leaves many problems unresolved. Our understanding is that it would fund a full-year General Fund budget at the same level as in fiscal 2019-2020 with some adjustments… Continue reading

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The Budget Pennsylvania Needs Now: A Preview and Analysis of the Full-Year 2020 Budget

  By Pennsylvania Budget

Download or print full document. No matter where we live, what we look like, whether we are native-born or immigrants, or whether we are struggling or getting by, the COVID-19 recession is a threat to all of us. We need the state government to do more for families and small businesses to meet that threat. Yet the recession will cost the state at least $3.3 billion in revenues over two years. Squaring this circle would be difficult at any time, but the General Assembly must act by November 30 when the stop-gap funding, enacted in June for about half of the General Fund, runs out. Democratic and Republican senators appear close to a compromise that avoids a budget impasse at this dangerous time even as it leaves many problems unresolved. Our understanding is that it would fund a full-year General Fund budget at the same level as in Fiscal Year… Continue reading

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Stopgap Budget Is Incomplete but Takes a Small Step Towards a Just Recovery

  By Budget, PA Budget and Policy Center, Pennsylvania Budget

Originally published by KRC-PBPC here. HARRISBURG – Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center director Marc Stier issued the following statement in response to the Pennsylvania General Assembly’s passage of a stopgap budget for Fiscal Year 2020-2021 and legislation that appropriates part of Federal Cares Act funds.  “The Pennsylvania House and Senate, with the support of Governor Wolf, this week took an important step towards enacting a budget for Fiscal Year 2020-21, which starts on July 1, and also made some important decisions on how to distribute the federal CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) Act funds. Everyone acknowledges that the budget remains incomplete. In saying that, we mean that not only is most of the budget funded for only five months but that critical needs remain to be met as well. The pandemic has shown everyone what many of us have long known—there are deep inequities in our society. Our goal is not just… Continue reading

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What Not to Do in the Face of a COVID-19 Driven Recession: Lessons from the Corbett Years

  By COVID-19, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Budget

Originally published by KCR-PBPC here. By Marc Stier and Diana Polson As COVID-19 hurtles us towards a global recession, Pennsylvania will need to make difficult decisions about how to handle a possibly huge shortfall in state revenues as well as a mandated increase in state costs for such things as Medicaid. We are working to estimate how much state revenues will suffer due to the recession but there are many unknowns, especially because this is an unusual recession, one that is a product of deliberate and necessary policy choice. With no models for this kind of recession, we do not know how deep the recession will be, how long it will last, or how quickly the economy can recover. At this point, we can only give a wide range of possibilities. It is likely that state revenues will drop between $4.5 and $9 billion in the current fiscal year and… Continue reading

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Calm Before the Storm: An Analysis of Governor Wolf’s Proposed Budget for 2020-21

  By Budget analysis, Diana Polson, PA Budget and Policy Center, Pennsylvania Budget, Stephen Herzenberg

Originally published by KRC-PBPC here, By Diana Polson, Marc Stier, and Stephen Herzenberg We were in the last two weeks of work on this analysis of the governor’s proposed budget for the fiscal year beginning on July 1, 2020, when the political and economic world in which we’d been living tilted on its axis. The coronavirus that is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic was creating havoc in China, both to the health of the population and to the economy of the country. It is now clear that the United States is heading into a recession. We should expect that our economy, and indeed the whole world, will suffer for some time. A recession will have a severe impact on the budget of Pennsylvania with regard to both revenues and expenditure. Revenues will certainly decline. And expenditures for human services—especially for Medical Assistance (Pennsylvania’s Medicaid program), Unemployment Compensation, SNAP (formerly called… Continue reading

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Corporate Tax Cuts Since 2002 Cost PA $4.2B Annually

  By Corporate Taxes, Diana Polson, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Budget, Pennsylvania State Taxes, Stephen Herzenberg, Taxation

By Stephen Herzenberg, Diana Polson, and Marc Stier Closing Delaware loophole, instituting worldwide combined reporting would level the playing field for small businesses and generate over $700 million a year to invest in PA communities This paper focuses on the details of one part of this story: the cuts in corporate taxes in Pennsylvania since 2002 that have reduced revenues by what is now $4.2 billion per year and have created a tax system that is among the most unfair in the country.   Pennsylvania’s tax–cutting, shaped by the corporate-sponsored narrative, has taken a variety of forms. Under both Republican and Democratic governors, we have entirely eliminated one of our two major taxes on corporations, the Capital Stock and Franchise Tax (CSFT). We have also allowed businesses to lower their reported profits subject to the largest remaining corporate tax—the Corporate Net Income (CNI) tax. And we have continued to give multi-state corporations free rein to cook their books and exploit corporate tax loopholes to their reported income subject to the CNI. The result is that 73% of corporations that do business in Pennsylvania… Continue reading

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On The PA Budget Spending Plan Passed by the House Appropriations Committee

  By Pennsylvania Budget, Statements

HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center director Marc Stier made the following statement after the PA House Appropriations Committee passed a budget spending plan: “The House Republicans’ budget proposal released today is sadly, but not surprisingly, a disappointment for working-class and middle-class families. “It includes no increase in the minimum wage even though every state around Pennsylvania has raised its minimum wage and found that the result has been not only higher wages but higher employment in low-wage occupations. “It provides less funding for Basic Education than Governor Wolf proposed and diverts some of that request from public schools to the EITC program that supports unaccountable private schools that often cater to the richest Pennsylvanians. “It does not fund the General Assistance program, which provides a minimal level of support to some of the most vulnerable Pennsylvanians, many of whom are waiting to receive Social Security disability payments. “In… Continue reading

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  By John Neurohr, PA Budget and Policy Center, Pennsylvania Budget, Statements

With John Neurohr Originally published by KRC-PBPC. HARRISBURG—PA Budget and Policy Center director Marc Stier made the following statement in response to a press release sent out today by the Pennsylvania Republican Party criticizing a Budget Day of Action and rally/press conference in Harrisburg today in support of raising the state minimum wage: “The PA Republican Party is criticizing the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center and the We The People campaign for offering citizens a bus trip or a gift card to pay for their gas to make the trip to Harrisburg to advocate for a raise in the minimum wage. “Somehow in their effort to criticize us for helping Pennsylvanians who are taking a day off—in many cases from minimum wage jobs—to exercise their rights as citizens, they have forgotten that the business community that opposes raising the minimum wage has paid lobbyists who no doubt get their mileage… Continue reading