Category: Statement

Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on November 12, 2025. Pennsylvania schools, social service providers, and local governments are grateful today that the General Assembly is poised to adopt a state budget for the fiscal year that began on July 1, 2025. When a budget is so late, the temptation is to just celebrate its completion. And while the budget contains one major achievement—a second year of school funding—there is much in this budget that we cannot celebrate. Here are our top takeaways from analyzing this budget: First, the budget makes a second major investment in meeting the state’s constitutional, as well as moral, responsibility to provide every student an adequate and equitable education. Governor Shapiro and House and Senate Democrats should be applauded for making education funding their top priority and insisting that the state stay on the course set out in last year’s budget. And Republicans should be… Continue reading

Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on August 12, 2025. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Date: August 12, 2025 Contact: Erica Freeman, Deputy Communications Director, freemane@pennpolicy.org Statement on the Senate Republicans’ Pennsylvania Budget Bill Republican legislators pass a budget that fails to meet Pennsylvanians’ needs, underfunding Medicaid, education, public transit, and more HARRISBURG, PA ­— The Pennsylvania Policy Center released the following statement by Executive Director Marc Stier on the budget passed by Senate Republicans on August 12, 2025. “Six weeks after the budget deadline, Senate Republicans have voted today to flat-fund education and every other part of the state budget. This budget fails to meet the moral and constitutional requirement—as interpreted by the General Assembly itself last year—to fully and fairly fund our schools. It fails to fund Medicaid at the level necessary to pay for the health care needs the state is obligated to meet by state and federal law.… Continue reading

Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on July 14, 2025. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 14, 2025 Contact: Kirstin Snow, Communications Director, snow@pennpolicy.org Statement on House Budget Vote – Marc Stier, Executive Director, Pennsylvania Policy Center The Pennsylvania House today passed a general appropriations bill, HB 1330. While it was a Democratic proposal, it received a few Republican votes.  With the state budget two weeks late, this is a welcome sign. Also welcome is that the budget largely embraces Governor Shapiro’s education funding proposals.  While the vote is welcome, in two respects, it is not a final product. First, it is, as Democrats and Republicans in both House and Senate rightly point out, not a final product. With a divided legislature, Senate Republicans must reach an agreement with House Democrats and the governor to enact a general appropriations bill.  Second, a final budget that truly meets the needs of Pennsylvanians must include… Continue reading

Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on July 3, 2025. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 3, 2025 CONTACT: Kirstin Snow, snow@pennpolicy.org The House of Representatives’ decision to agree to a morally and economically bankrupt budget reconciliation bill is deeply troubling. There is so much that’s appalling about what Donald Trump and the Republicans have done. There is the shredding of the social safety net—deep cuts to Medicaid, the ACA, and SNAP—that will bring physical pain, economic distress, and thousands of premature deaths to the people of Pennsylvania and the United States. Seventeen million people in the United States and roughly 500,000 in Pennsylvania will lose health insurance. Four million people in the United States are at risk of losing SNAP while Pennsylvania losses will be between 400,000 and one million people per year. There is the repeal of the efforts to address climate change, which will even more rapidly create natural… Continue reading

Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on July 1, 2025. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE JULY 1, 2025 CONTACT: Erica Freeman, freemane@pennpolicy.org The Senate Vote Is a Historic Failure Senate Passes Bill that Takes Health Care from 17 Million, Adds $4 Trillion to Nat’l Debt Today the Senate passed what, if also passed by the House, will go down as one of the most reviled pieces of legislation in American history. No other legislation in our history has ever redistributed as much income from those at the bottom and middle of the income distribution to those at the top. No other in our history has ever stripped away health care and food assistance from tens of millions of people in our country and hundreds of thousands in our state. The unfairness of this legislation is almost palpable. Right now, almost everyone in America receives government subsidies for the essential good of health… Continue reading