Category: Politics

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Is This the Year PA Resolves its Perennial Budget Crisis?

  By Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Budget

Originally published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, December 28, 2016. Many of us who write about budget politics have a keyboard shortcut to enter “Pennsylvanian Budget Crisis” into a document. Year after year, we write in December about the upcoming crisis and again in July (or sometimes far later) about how the crisis has been temporarily averted. It is crisis time again. But perhaps this is the year we can change the script. There are new ways to do something that has eluded us in the past – solve the crisis on a long-term basis without imposing harsher new taxes on working people and the middle class. Before coming to our long-term solution to the crisis, first a word about its dimension and cause. The Independent Fiscal Office has projected that the deficit for the current fiscal year, ending June 30, will be $500 million while the deficit for the next… Continue reading

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Combine Spending Restraint With New Revenue

  By Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Budget, Public Policy

Originally appeared in the Erie Times, December 28, 2016 Pennsylvania has been struggling with persistent budget deficits since the start of the Great Recession in 2008. And we at the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center have been recommending a “balanced approach” to resolving the deficit from the beginning, one that combines restraint in spending with new revenues. But since 2010, under Govs. Tom Corbett and Tom Wolf, the General Assembly has adopted an unbalanced approach. Spending has gone down but revenues have gone down faster. From 1994 to 2011, under both Democratic and Republican governors, the state spent 4.7 percent of the state’s gross domestic product. During the Corbett years that fell to 4.3 percent as spending on education and human services were sharply cut. And while, thanks to Wolf, the state has been able to restore some of those cuts, spending in the last two years remains at the… Continue reading

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Pennsylvania Needs a Fairer Tax System

  By PA Budget and Policy Center, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Budget, Published op-eds

Originally published by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 26, 2016 Our proposal would be more equitable while also helping to close the deficit Pennsylvania faces another budget crisis. The combined deficit for this year and next is roughly $3 billion. It’s time all Pennsylvanians — and especially the members of our General Assembly — recognize that recurrent budget crises won’t stop until we fix our upside-down tax system. Federal tax rates are higher for those with higher incomes than those with lower incomes. However, combined state and local taxes, because they rely on property taxes, sales taxes and income taxes that do not have steeply graduated rates, often tax those with low incomes at roughly the same percentage as those with high incomes. Pennsylvania is worse than most states on this score. It is one of what the Institute on Tax and Economic Policy calls the “terrible 10” when it comes… Continue reading

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Broad and Narrow Taxes

  By PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts, Pennsylvania, Taxation

Last week, just as we were putting out our paper on how to raise revenues without raising taxes on working people and the middle class, Governor Wolf announced that he would not call for raising broad-based taxes, particularly the personal income tax and sales tax, in the budget proposal he puts forward in February. And, of course, the Governor’s statement echoes what the Republican leaders of the General Assembly have been saying as well.   A friend asked me if I were disappointed by these announcements. I quickly responded, “not at all.”  Most of our tax plan is precisely designed NOT to require increases in broad based taxes. Indeed, the core of our proposal—a new tax on income from wealth—targets families in the top 5%, and even more the top 1%, of incomes. Sixty-seven percent of new revenues would come from top 5%. Middle- and low- income families would pay very… Continue reading

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Limitations on the State and Local Tax Deduction Hurt Pennsylvania in Two Ways

  By Federal Taxes, PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts, Resisting Trump, Taxation, US

A major issue in the debate over the Republican tax cut bill is whether the deduction for state and local taxes (the SALT deduction) should be eliminated or reduced. The conference committee bill released on Friday proposes a “compromise” that would allow individuals to deduct up to $10,000 in some combination of state and local property and income or sales taxes. That compromise is deeply problematic for Pennsylvania and many Pennsylvanians, in two different ways. First, substantial numbers of upper middle-class Pennsylvanians will see their taxes go up as a result of the limitation on state and local tax deductions in the conference committee bill. These taxpayers are likely to be concentrated in the suburbs of Philadelphia, where a high percentage of taxpayers take the state and local deduction. Second, the state as a whole will suffer because the limitation on the state and local tax deduction will make it… Continue reading

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For Hillary Clinton Without Tears

  By 2016 Presidential race, Politics

I’m going to try, one last time, to talk without rancor to those of you are thinking of voting for Stein or not voting at all instead of voting for Hillary Clinton. And let me start by saying that every activist I know who has played a role in actually changing public policy in a progressive direction is voting for Hillary. And that includes all of us who voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary. I know an awful lot of them. I know people have fought for civil rights laws; opposed the Vietnam War; made the Clean and Water Act possible; secured increases in the minimum wage; reformed health care; raised taxes on the rich; expanded funding for education at all levels: pre-k, K-12, higher education; enacted the tax soda; brought supermarkets into food deserts; expanded housing opportunity. We are all, without exception, voting for Hillary Clinton. Some of… Continue reading

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Rep. Brad Roae Compares School Board Members to Hitler

  By K-12 Education in PA, Legislative Politics and Rules, PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts

Marc Stier | 10/19/2016 Blog This week, in a Facebook discussion with a person who seems to be one of his constituents, Representative Brad Roae (R-Crawford/Erie) felt it was appropriate to compare school board members in Pennsylvania blaming charter schools for the financial difficulties of their districts to Adolf Hitler blaming Jews for “everything that was wrong with the world.” I’m not sure whether I should be more offended as a Jew or as a policy analyst by Representative Roae’s remark.     It is, of course, morally offensive to anyone who grasps the evil of Hitler’s murder of 6 million Jews, to compare it to any other crime. A general rule of thumb about Hitler comparisons is to not make Hitler comparisons. But to compare it to a public policy choice like the opposition of school boards to charter schools would be doubly offensive if it were not so… Continue reading

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New Data, Good News: Health Care

  By Health Care, PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts, Pennsylvania, US

Most news is bad news. And political campaigns are more likely to flag what is wrong with our country than what is right with it. So, it’s not surprising that in the heat of a presidential election, we are more focused on what is wrong with our country than what is right with it. But as the federal government updates its statistics on income, poverty, and health care this week, we can take a moment to appreciate the good news—government at the federal and state level has been increasingly successful at encouraging prosperity. We start today with health care. The Affordable Care Act remains controversial and even those of us who support it recognize that further reforms are needed to guarantee that quality health care remains affordable to everyone. There can be little doubt that the ACA is working in Pennsylvania and beyond. Between those who bought health insurance on… Continue reading

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Not Necessarily Corrupt

  By Philadelphia

I don’t know any more than anyone else does of the FBI raids on Local 98 offices, the home of John J. Dougherty, and the office of Councilman Bobby Henon. Which is to say I know nothing, just like everyone else. And that’s why I’ve objected to the rush to conclude that any of those raided must have done something wrong or that Local 98 is corrupt. And even more, I’ve objected to people saying that this is one more example of the corruption of Philadelphia politics or of Philadelphia labor unions that “everyone knows about,” as one reporter put it today. We don’t know any of that and saying it doesn’t make it so. Is there some corruption in Philadelphia city government? I have no doubt there is. But I’ve got no reason to think it’s worse in Philadelphia than in any other big cities not to mention in smaller… Continue reading