Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on August 27, 2025. August 26, 2025 By Laura Beltrán Figueroa and Marc Stier VIEW IN A PDF READER. who benefits from public transit in paDownload 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
Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on June 28, 2025. Comments are by Marc Stier – Executive Director, Penn Policy Center As Senate begins consideration of the reconciliation bill today, I’m going to be commenting on the politics of reconciliation and the contents of the Senate bill. Sunday, June 29, 10:16 p.m. I’m wearing down after a long day and week, so this will be my last post today. The floor debate, which began at 3:00 pm, will go on for another three to five hours. Democrats will use the time to not only point out the flaws of the bill but also to further delay the process. Following debate, “vote-a-rama” is now expected to begin around midnight. Vote-a-rama will go through the night and the Senate Republican leadership’s goal is to have a final vote on the bill sometime tomorrow, likely late night. But it could be delayed to early Tuesday. We… Continue reading
Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on June 19, 2025. By Marc Stier It appears that my recent letter to the editor in the Inquirer, claiming that business taxes are not a deterrent to business activity in Philadelphia, got under the skin of MAGA mega-donor and Pennsylvania’s richest man, Jeff Yass. He responded with a letter of his own: “In a recent letter to the editor, Marc Stier of the Pennsylvania Policy Center states that research shows business taxes are not deterrents to economic growth. Quite the opposite, he adds. The city wage tax, currently about 3.5%, generates approximately $2 billion per year. May I suggest we double it to 7%, raise an additional $2 billion, and increase per-child spending in Philadelphia to $42,000 per student — up from the current $32,000 — for each of our Jeff Yass, Bala Cynwyd Jeff Yass’s financial acumen is highly touted, so I’m a… Continue reading
Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on June 19, 2025. June 19, 2025 By Marc Stier and Erica Freeman Juneteenth is a day of celebration that marks the end of slavery in America. But it should also be a time of reflection about white supremacy’s continued presence and the way it affects our country. This year, it’s virtually impossible to ignore the resurgence of explicit and unabashed racism in America, which is a major force in the MAGA movement and the steps the current administration has been taking to roll back efforts to diminish the role of white supremacy in the United States. While we celebrate the Emancipation Proclamation, we all know that white supremacy didn’t end with slavery. Today, forced, unpaid Black labor hasn’t ended as contemporary mass incarceration, including chain gangs in some states, forces Black people to engage in unfree labor for meager wages, as did the… Continue reading
Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on June 13, 2025. June 13, 2025 by Marc Stier When they fully understand it, many Trump voters don’t support his roundup of undocumented immigrants. Talk to them and they’ll say, “I want the criminals deported, but we didn’t vote for hardworking people who have been here for years to be thrown out of the country.” Support for Trump’s immigration policies depends largely on people believing the big lie that a substantial number of undocumented immigrants are criminals or that they are receiving government benefits, which aside from K–12 education for children, is rarely true. But there are some who say that undocumented immigrants have “violated our laws” and “jumped the line” and so should be deported. I want to reply to that objection and do so in a way that supports the belief that most Americans—including Trump supporters—hold, which is that most undocumented… Continue reading
Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on June 12, 2025. June 12, 2025 By Marc Stier The 2025 Tax Reform Commission (TRC) recently called on the City to eliminate the net income portion of the Business Income and Receipts Tax (BIRT) and to make small cuts to the wage tax. Last week, Mayor Parker endorsed small reductions along these lines. Following the TRC recommendations, however, would take Philadelphia down the wrong path. Our organization’s analysis of Philadelphia’s economy and tax structure shows that the TRC report is a flawed anachronism. It repeats the arguments of the 2003 commission, without considering the changes in our economy in twenty years. First, if we look at the most accurate data, it’s clear that Philadelphia is creating jobs fast. While the city lost more jobs relative to other cities in the Northeast and Midwest in the last quarter of the 20th century, jobs have… Continue reading