Category: PBPC Blog posts

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Early Returns Look Good in Philadelphia’s Nation-leading Fight for a Soda Tax

  By PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts, Sugary Drink Tax

I wasn’t surprised by the substantial revenues that the soda tax is bringing in, even while there is some reason to believe that soda consumption is down in the city, as we predicted it would be. For me, the soda tax has two aims–to bring in revenue and to discourage the over-consumption of soda, which contribute  to diabetes and heart disease. The second aim will  over five or ten years become more important as the tax plus public education teaches people consume to a lot less soda. Revenues will decline then, and our healthier city will need to replace some of them  raised by the tax. But at present, it looks like  revenues will be substantial to pay for the expansion of pre-K education and the community playgrounds and recreation centers for which the tax is dedicted. It will  take a month or two for these new revenues  to ramp… Continue reading

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What ACA Repeal Means in Pennsylvania

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

We have seen politics in America take strange turns in the last few years, turns that often seem to reflect an almost total disregard of the basic facts of political and economic life. It is critical that we don’t allow this to happen in the debate about the Affordable Care Act. The consequences of repealing the ACA in Pennsylvania will be not only devastating, but deadly. We at PBPC are working on a detailed report about the consequences of repealing the ACA in our state. It will be ready soon. But the preliminary information we have compiled is so horrifying that we don’t want to wait to give you the broad outlines of what we are finding: ACA repeal will cause over 1 million Pennsylvanians to lose health insurance.Many of our fellow citizens will face dire health consequences for lack of health insurance as a result. ACA repeal will be… Continue reading

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Two Approaches to the State Budget

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

It’s becoming more and more rare to see serious attempts on the part of newspapers (and their virtual counterparts) to compare policy proposals meant to deal with a serious public issue. That’s one reason I was so happy to see Tim Stuhldreher’s excellent piece, “Pennsylvania think tanks battle over remedies for $1.7 billion state budget deficit” in LancasterOnline. The other reason I was happy is that the article demonstrates the difference between a serious proposal that actually tries to find a solution to the budget deficit—our Fair Share Tax Plan—and the Commonwealth Foundation’s right wing wish-list, which barely even gestures towards a solution. What, according to the piece, does the Commonwealth Foundation propose to close our state budget deficit? And what’s wrong with those ideas? They propose: Putting new state employees in a 401(k) pensions—even though Republicans have failed time and again to find such a proposal that actually reduces… Continue reading

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The rich can take the hit–to fix the budget they should pay their fair share.

  By PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts, Pennsylvania Budget, Pennsylvania State Taxes, Published Op-Eds

Marc Stier | 01/17/2017 Blog This piece originally appeared on Pennlive, December 23, 2016. You remember how Lucille Ball would work her way into some kind of predicament and then look around and wonder how she got there? That’s how our state legislators seem to look at the budget deficit we are stuck with right now. They are looking around wondering how the current Pennsylvania budget deficit, which approaches $3 billion for this year and next year together, happened. But it didn’t just happen. It was the product of a series of long-term and short-term decisions made by legislators, sometimes with the help of our governors. Let’s start, however, with what did not cause the budget deficit, because too many of our legislators, like Lucy, want to blame someone else for the mess they have made. Growth in state spending is not the cause of budget deficits. From 1994 to… 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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The Budget Our Democracy Deserves

  By Fair Share Tax, PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts, Taxation

Many of the ideas in this post are components of PBPC’s recently-released “Fair Share Tax Proposal for Pennsylvania.” The recent political talk about Pennsylvania is focused on the latest in a series of fiscal crises. But lurking in the background is a larger crisis—a crisis of democracy in Pennsylvania. The deficit approaches $3 billion for this year and next year combined. Yet the solutions that one would think were most obvious in a putative democracy are not the ones the leaders of our General Assembly seem inclined to support. We are never going to solve our budget crises in Pennsylvania if we don’t fix our upside-down tax system. Pennsylvania is one of what the Institute on Tax and Economic Policy calls the “terrible ten” states when it comes to tax fairness. We tax those with high incomes at a far lower proportion than those with low incomes. State and local… Continue reading

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New Report: How To Raise Revenues While Sparing Most Pennsylvanians

  By John Neurohr, PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts, Presentation, Taxation

In the wake of Budget Secretary Randy Albright’s mid-year budget briefing and the news that the Pennsylvania budget for 2016-17 will have a deficit of $600 million, the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center today released a new, comprehensive revenue proposal to address the looming deficit for FY 2017-18, which when combined with the deficit for this fiscal year, could approach $3 billion. The new report,  How to Raise Revenues While Sparing Most Pennsylvanians,” can be read in full here. While the current year deficit is a problem for the state, unfortunately it is not the biggest budget problem we face. The Independent Fiscal Office is projecting a 2017-18 deficit of $1.7 billion, which does not include the ongoing costs of higher human service caseloads which might add $300 million or more to the total. One barrier to raising revenues is the reluctance of legislators on both sides of the aisle to… 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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On The Mid-Year Budget Briefing: The Full Picture Is Even More Grim

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

Budget Secretary Randy Albright’s mid-year budget briefing this week brings worrisome news that, at its current level of expenditure and revenues, the Pennsylvania budget for the 2016-17 will have a deficit of $600 million. Part of that deficit is the result of lower tax revenues than were projected when the budget was enacted in July. Another part is higher human service caseloads, which will require a supplemental appropriation.   The projected deficit might increase again if the General Assembly does not enact legislation to bring in $100 million in internet gaming revenues and if a second Philadelphia casino license is not sold for $50 million. While the current year deficit is a problem for the state, unfortunately it is not the biggest budget problem we face. The Independent Fiscal Office is projecting a 2017-18 deficit of $1.7 billion, which does not include the ongoing costs of higher human service caseloads… Continue reading

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IFO Report: Deficits Now and In The Future

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

Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center Director Marc Stier made the following statement following the Independent Fiscal Office release of their Five Year Economic and Budget Outlook: “The herculean efforts of the Governor and General Assembly to overcome their divisions and reach a budget agreement last year may have enabled legislators to leave town in July. But it left the state with a deficit of at least $524 million for the current year, a projected deficit of at least $1.7 billion for the year beginning July 2017, and budget deficits that grow year after year beyond that. “If the state continues to generate revenue under current laws and maintains the current level of services, the projected deficit reaches $3 billion in 2021-22 and continues to grow by $175 million per year thereafter.  “That conclusion, which is contained in the new Five year Economic and Budget Outlook released today by the Independent… Continue reading