Category: PBPC Blog posts

No comments

This Isn’t the Redistricting Reform We Need

  By Legislative Districts, PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts, Redistricting

HARRISBURG—Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center director Marc Stier made the following statement regarding the resurfacing of SB22, a bill intended to change the way legislative redistricting is done in Pennsylvania: Senator Mike Folmer announced this week that he will be resurrecting last year’s failed SB22, a bill to change the way district lines are drawn in Pennsylvania. Senator Folmer is preparing to bring the bill back up for a vote in the State Government Committee as early as tomorrow. While eliminating gerrymandering is critically important, Senator Folmer is hoping to catch Pennsylvanians unawares as he attempts to bring a failed bill to a committee vote without holding debate and hearings and without gathering input from the communities that will be most impacted by SB22. Governor Wolf established a redistricting commission earlier this year and Senator Folmer should not attempt to rush SB22 through committee without giving Pennsylvanians a chance to… Continue reading

No comments

Governor Wolf’s 2019-2020 Budget: A First Take

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

Governor Wolf’s 2019-2020 budget proposal reflects the unique political moment in which it is presented. Pennsylvania is a state poised between two visions of government in Pennsylvania. The governor’s budget points to the future being born. But the budget is constrained by another vision that is not dying as quickly as we would like. The governor’s budget, like the budgets of his successful first administration, points the way to our future—a future in which Pennsylvanians act together to create inclusive prosperity that allows everyone, no matter their race, class, gender or where they live in the state to live a life of dignity, prosperity, and opportunity. However, until the General Assembly reflects the changing priorities of Pennsylvanians, which includes support for proposals that generate new revenues from the very rich and corporations, the state budget will not invest sufficiently in education at all levels, health care, infrastructure, and protecting our… Continue reading

No comments

Republican Judicial Districting — An Existential Threat to Pennsylvania Democracy

  By Judicial Gerrymandering, PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts, Redistricting

From Third and State, June 18, 2018 After the uprising of the 17th JuneThe Secretary of the Writers UnionHad leaflets distributed in the StalinalleeStating that the peopleHad forfeited the confidence of the governmentAnd could win it back onlyBy redoubled efforts. Would it not be easierIn that case for the governmentTo dissolve the peopleAnd elect another? – Bertolt Brecht As a resident of Communist East Germany, Bertolt Brecht understood better than most writers in the 20th century how fragile representative democracy can be and what a serious threat to our form of government looks like. And as his poem above points out, the key requirement of representative democracy is that the government be responsible to the people. For that to happen, elections have to be regular and they have to be fair. There can’t be any barriers to participation in elections and those elections need to be conducted under rules that give… Continue reading

No comments

The Trump Tax Bill Wasn’t For You

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

By Sean Kitchen It’s Tax Day 2018, and you know what that means?  The country’s wealthiest Americans are about to experience long-term gains from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.  The Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center is concerned about the effects of the tax cut law and legislation that would make temporary tax cuts permenant after 2025.    A new report from the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy shows that the top 1% will receive more federal tax dollars than the bottom 60% in 47 states, and the top 20% will gobble up the majority of returns from the temporary tax provisions that were baked into the bill as tax cuts for the middle class. The top 20% will also receive a larger and more disproportionate tax cut in relation to their income. The report published by the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy explains that those in the top 20%… Continue reading

No comments

It redistributes from working people and the middle class to the rich. And that’s just wrong.

  By Federal Taxes, PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts, Social Justice, Tump, US

Originally published at KRC-PBPC. With all the controversy over the details of the tax cut bill that is moving towards a final vote in the House and Senate this week it is easy to forget about the basic features of the bill. As they did during the debate over repeal of the Affordable Care Act, the Republicans put forward noxious proposals—to radically reduce the state and local tax deduction, to tax graduate student stipends, to eliminate the deduction for teachers who use their own funds in classrooms, and to eliminate the deduction for extremely high medical expenses among others—and then removed them from the final proposal. But we shouldn’t be gratified that these horrible elements of the bill are gone when the basic framework of the bill, which has remained constant in every version considered by the House and Senate, remains so awful. The legislation is basically a huge and… Continue reading

No comments

The GOP Tax Bill: An Assault on Economic Equality and Democracy

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

Budgets, it is frequently said, are an embodiment of our moral ideals and commitments. If so, the tax plan adopted by the Senate on Friday represents an extreme moral failure on the part of the senators from the Republican Party who voted for it. At a time when incomes are becoming ever more unequal, the Republican tax plan will ultimately make the rich richer and the poor and middle class poorer. Not only will working people and the middle class suffer, but so will our whole country. And not only that: one has to wonder what kind of democracy America has, when our government acts in such utter disregard of a majority of the country and the common good. Many of the features of this bill that work to help the rich and harm everyone else are now well known. So let’s quickly review them with links to the hard… Continue reading

No comments

On Joint Resolution 1, The Constitutional Amendment on Property Taxes

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

We are getting a lot of questions about what the constitutional amendment on the ballot this year means and where the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center stands on it. We haven’t rushed to judgment on it for a couple of reasons. First, we are not convinced that this amendment will, by itself, have much impact on policy in the state. And second, given that any amendment to the Constitution is important, we wanted to make sure we understood all the implications of it before reaching a conclusion. We have reached a conclusion — that the amendment won’t make much difference. And that’s why we aren’t going to offer any recommendation about how to vote. So let’s begin by explaining what the amendment does and, as importantly, does not do. The background: our uniformity clause The key piece of background information one must know to understand this amendment is that the… Continue reading

No comments

For Many Pennsylvanians, Insurance Premiums Increase Are Greater Than Tax Cuts

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

As we have pointed out previously, because it repeals the individual mandate, the Senate tax cut proposal will not only lead to 13 million fewer people having health insurance in the United States, but it will lead to much higher premiums for many who do purchase health insurance on the individual market. The CBO’s estimate was that premiums nationwide would increase by 10%. Last week we presented a very rough estimate of the impact of repeal of the mandate on the average cost of health insurance premiums in Pennsylvania and suggested that the average increase in premiums is likely to be higher than the average savings in taxes under the Senate plan. New research from the Commonwealth Fund provides more detailed information on the increase in premiums for Pennsylvanians at different ages. And their work reinforces our conclusion. In 2019, much of the benefit of the tax cut to middle… Continue reading

No comments

Help for Your Thanksgiving Day Tax Debates

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

If your family is anything like ours, politics tends to come up around the Thanksgiving Day table and diverse opinions are often put forward, including by one or more of our cranky uncles who mutter about “those people” and the “damn government.” Since your cranky uncles like mine no doubt listens to Rush and his friends, they are going to present you with a lot of misinformation about the GOP federal tax cut bill. But have no fear as we have your back.   Claim: Of course we are cutting taxes for the rich and not for the poor. Only the rich pay income taxes. Answer: This is the myth that helped cost Mitt Romney the election in 2012. It’s totally misleading. It is true that in good economic years, about 40% of households don’t owe federal taxes. But: 1. If we include federal payroll taxes, only about 14% of… Continue reading

No comments

In Truth, The PA Budget Is Still Not Done

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

A quick take If the governor signs the tax and fiscal code bills passed this week, or allows them to become law, a funding plan for the Pennsylvania Budget for 2017-2018 that technically allows for a balanced budget will be complete. But the work of the General Assembly is not finished because this funding plan not only fails to address the long-term budget problems faced by the state, it deepens those problems. The result will be that the fiscal year beginning in July 2018 will be in deficit and that, unless the state changes direction, those deficits will no doubt increase in subsequent years. (Click the title for more) A genuine bi-partisan effort on the part of the governor, a majority of the Pennsylvania Senate, and what appears to be a majority of the Pennsylvania House sought to enact a shale tax, that is a severance tax on natural gas… Continue reading