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STATEMENT: On the Tax Study Released by the PA Chamber of Business and Industry Type

  By Statements, Taxation

HARRISBURG — The Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center released the following statement from director Marc Stier on the study, “Pennsylvania: A 21st Century Tax Code for the Commonwealth,” released today by the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry: “The Chamber of Commerce announced today a tax proposal for our state that is the Pennsylvania equivalent of Trump’s federal tax plan. It would put more of the tax burden on working- and middle-class Pennsylvanians while reducing taxes for the rich and corporations. And it will make it harder to balance our budget in the future. “While there are a few elements of the plan we think make sense, the entire plan rests on a fundamental confusion between a tax system that is “business-friendly” and a tax system that is “friendly to rich people including the owners of large corporations and those who have inherited wealth.” A business-friendly tax policy would be… Continue reading

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It’s Labor Day Weekend: Let’s Talk About Unrigging The Economy for Workers

  By Inequality, Labor, Politics, Public Policy

During the Labor Day holiday when we celebrate working men and women — and at a time when we are entering a critical election season — let’s stop and ask how we can give those working Americans what they most want and need: higher wages and better jobs in a growing economy. That is a question for which there are two starkly different answers. Since the dawn of the Reagan era, right-wingers have claimed that cutting taxes on corporations and the rich will spur economic growth and raise wages. That theory is embodied in the tax cuts Trump and Congressional Republicans enacted this year. The corporate tax rate was slashed from 35% to 21%. Income tax cuts were heavily weighted to the to the top 5%, who receive half of the tax reduction, and the top 1%, who receive over 25%. What has been the consequence for working people? Only 4.3% of… Continue reading

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A Roadmap to a New PA

  By PA Budget and Policy Center, Pennsylvania, Public Policy, We The People–PA

A Roadmap to a New Pennsylvania: State Policy Towards a Safer, Healthier, More Prosperous and Equitable Commonwealth Written by the We The People Policy and Communications Team with guidance and input from our allies. Stephen Herzenberg, John Neurohr, Diana Polson, and Marc Stier. Edited by Marc Stier Below is the We The People’s comprehensive public policy manual for lawmakers and advocates, “A Roadmap to a New Pennsylvania: State Policy Towards a Safer, Healthier, More Prosperous and Equitable Commonwealth,” which was derived from the best policy research from experts across the country, and informed by everyday Pennsylvanians who came together in 13 community meetings all over the state. At those meetings, citizens found broad agreement on what is wanted from state government: public policies that make poor, working and middle-class Pennsylvanians safer, healthier, and more prosperous. This became the We The People – PA policy agenda. The Roadmap is an expanded breakdown that agenda—a… Continue reading

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On Redistricting: Good Intentions Are Not Enough

  By Redistricting

From Third and State, July 15, 2018 The first rule of politics, like that of medicine, is do no harm. And the intention to do no harm is not enough, you need a strategy to ensure that your actions actually avoid doing harm directly or indirectly. Once again, Fair Districts PA (FDPA) and March on Harrisburg, in two separate ways, are potentially doing harm to our political system in Pennsylvania.  FDPA and March on Harrisburg have been protesting Governor Wolf, demanding that he call the PA General Assembly back for a special session to pass a redistricting constitutional amendment before the clock runs out sometime this month.  I will point out in a moment that the focus on Governor Wolf is misplaced and potentially dangerous. But the deeper problem is that calling the General Assembly back into session makes no sense if you don’t have a reasonable goal for them… Continue reading

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On the Supreme Court Janus v. AFSCME Decision

  By John Neurohr, Labor, PA Budget and Policy Center, Statements, Stephen Herzenberg

HARRISBURG — Keystone Research Center executive director Stephen Herzenberg and Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center director Marc Stier made the following statement regarding today’s Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court decision: “In a 5-4 decision that resulted directly from the [evasion of constitutional responsibility and] abuse of power that led to the appointment of Justice Neil Gorsuch, the United States Supreme Court today took another step to rig our economy and our politics against working families and to further diminish the collective rights of working people. By reversing the longstanding precedent set in the 1977 Abood case, the Janus decision makes the entire United States public sector a ‘right to work for less’ country with the stroke of a pen. The decision deprives unions of any financial support from non-members who nonetheless benefit from union representation and collective bargaining to improve wages, benefits, and working conditions. The decision violates a fundamental… Continue reading

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On the General Assembly Passage of the General Appropriations Bill

  By Budget, PA Budget and Policy Center, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Budget, Statements

This press statement, released on June 22, 2018, reflects PBPC director Marc Stier’s statement following the General Assembly’s passage of a budget spending plan that will be sent to Governor Wolf. HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center director Marc Stier made the following statement after the General Assembly passed a budget spending plan that will now be sent to Governor Wolf: “When Governor Wolf released his budget proposal in March, we noted that his plan had the right priorities but, given the political realities he faced, understandably did not put forward initiatives bold enough to close the deep public investment deficit in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvanians should feel the same about the general appropriations bill that passed through the General Assembly today. “The new budget provides welcome new investments in pre-K and K-12 education, special education, higher education, workforce training, child care, treatment for substance abuse disorder, and intellectual disabilities. These… Continue reading

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Protect Our Representative Democracy — Stop The GOP Attack on the PA Courts

  By Redistricting

From Third and State, June 18, 2018 Representative democracy in Pennsylvania is under attack. This week, on a straight party-line vote, Republican senators passed a constitutional amendment that would give the majority party in the General Assembly a strikingly unprecedented degree of influence over who is elected to our courts, including the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. In turn, that would undermine the checks and balances in our state government — including those that have blocked, and would block in the future, the Republicans from tilting the rules of our democracy in their favor. This new action taken by our heavily gerrymandered state Senate is one more step in a slow-motion coup by which Republicans are seeking to change the political rules to give them control over our state government without having to be bothered to win more votes in fair elections. It follows the enactment of Voter ID laws that would… Continue reading

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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

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Time to Stop SB 22

  By Redistricting

From Third and State, June 12, 2018 Republicans today added a second constitutional amendment to, in effect, gerrymander the Supreme Court to a bill, SB22, that proposed a constitutional amendment to stop gerrymandering of the congressional and state legislative elections. The Supreme Court gerrymandering amendment passed on a party line vote. And it means that today all supporters of redistricting reform, including PBPC, withdrew support for SB22 and tomorrow all Democrats will likely vote against  it. We do not yet know what the prospects for SB22 are in the House, but we will join other groups in working to defeat it. There are some better signs today. PBPC and other groups have been pointing to flaws in the SB22 as amended by Senator Folmer. Those flaws are technical and difficult for many people to understand. But today Senator Vince Hughes put forward an amendment that fixed those flaws and it… Continue reading

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The Follmer Redistricting Commission: Neither Independent Nor Nonpartisan

  By Legislative Districts, Policy briefs, Redistricting

 Both the political class in Harrisburg and the progressive community around the state are focused today on the redistricting issue. Last week the Senate State Government Committee passed a version of Senate Bill 22 that was crafted by Senator Mike Folmer. Some of the advocacy groups that have been working in favor of a fair redistricting process have been cautiously, or in some cases not so cautiously, supportive of it. Some who have argued that the proposal itself is problematic have held that passing it in the Senate is a necessary step to reaching a better bill. I’m reluctant to create divisions among people who are generally allies, but I want to make clear that I believe the Folmer redistricting proposal is not only deeply flawed but is in no way a step forward for those of us who want to see a fair, nonpartisan process of drawing congressional and… Continue reading