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We The People – PA Statement on Senate Bill 878

  By Elections and Voting, We The People–PA

We The People – PA is encouraged by the bipartisan Senate effort to find improvements in our electoral process. We welcome senators’ attention to real problems instead of reinforcing myths about the 2020 election. The bill has some good elements but some that concern us as well. So, we also welcome the opportunity that Senators Argall and Street have provided to suggest improvements in the bill. In considering each part of the bill, we suggest that senators keep in mind the following principles. First, the primary goal of any election reforms should be to make voting easier and more accessible for the people of Pennsylvania. Second, while the security of elections is critical to all of us, we must not adopt security features that are unnecessary or that make voting less accessible. Third, county officials can only make voting accessible and secure if they are well funded. Many of the… Continue reading

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We The People – PA Statement on Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee Actions

  By Democracy, Elections and Voting, We The People–PA

Harrisburg, PA — the following is a statement from Marc Stier, director of the PA Budget and Policy Center and chair of the We The People PA campaign. Pennsylvania Senate Republicans are unwilling to address the problems of working people while small businesses and families all over the Commonwealth are still suffering from the effects of a COVID-19 pandemic that has recently become more serious due to the Delta variant of the virus. They have no plans to spend the $7.5 billion of our tax dollars in state bank accounts to help citizens, yet they do have time to continue to spread Donald Trump’s lies and misstatements about the 2020 election under the guise of conducting an utterly unnecessary and duplicative “forensic audit” of it. The latest example of this effort was a decision today, on a 7-4 party-line vote, to issue subpoenas to secure more information about which Pennsylvanians voted and how they voted in recent… Continue reading

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On HB 1596: The Constitutional Amendment Grab-Bag Bill

  By Democracy, Elections and Voting, PA Budget and Policy Center, Policy briefs

House Bill 1596 is a grab-bag of proposed amendments to the PA Constitution. Many of them are will suppress voting in Pennsylvania and compromise the fairness of our elections. To read full screen or print click here. Continue reading

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On the Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee Hearing on the 2020 Election

  By Democracy, Elections and Voting, PA Budget and Policy Center, Statements

Rather than address the needs of Pennsylvania workers, small business owners, and families still suffering from the effect of the pandemic, the Republican-led Pennsylvania Senate begins yet another round of hearings about the 2020 election today—an election that most Pennsylvanians believe was settled in January. It is important to put this hearing in its proper context. We offer six observations. First, Senator Dush, the chair of the committee, and Senator Corman, the Senate president pro-tempore, have repeatedly said that these hearings are a response to doubts about the probity of the 2020 election. They fail to add is that those doubts have been stirred up again and again by Republican leaders, starting with former President Trump and his disgraced lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, and continuing with Republican members of the U.S. House and Pennsylvania House and Senate who have repeated falsehoods that have been discredited by fact-checkers and by both state… Continue reading

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On Governor Wolf’s Imposed Mask Mandate

  By COVID-19

  The PA Budget and Policy Center supports Governor Wolf’s decision to require teachers, staff, and students to wear masks in all K-12 schools and in child care centers for four reasons. First, this is a measure that is necessary to protect the school children and entire communities in Pennsylvania from the threat of the highly contagious Delta variant of COVID-19. Taking this step will also help keep schools open, which is important to both families and the education of our children. It will also limit disruption for working families, school communities, and local businesses. Second, the governor’s decision vindicates the basic principle that public health measures should be decided on the basis of the best science available to us. The scientific consensus tells us that masks help reduce the spread of the virus and protect all of us, especially children who cannot yet be vaccinated Finally, the governor’s decision… Continue reading

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An Open Letter to State Representative Russ Diamond

  By COVID-19

Dear Representative Diamond, The other day you publicly shared an article about the possible dangers of the mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. I read it and the underlying scientific article. While one can raise some quibbles about the scientific competence of computer scientists writing about viruses and vaccines, I actually think it is an excellent example of the kind of hard questioning that is central to the process of scientific inquiry. The article draws on some established and new theories to raise questions about whether the mRNA vaccines could have negative consequences. Without that kind of questioning and the research it generates, it is possible to miss unintended consequences of medical treatments. (I believe that some people with scientific expertise think that some of the theories put forward in the article are misunderstood or quite wrong. But I don’t have the expertise to make that judgment. My conclusions here presuppose that… Continue reading

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STATEMENT: The Shortfall in Rental Assistance Is a Policy Choice

  By Housing, PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts, Statements

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, 45,000 households have applied for rental assistance as of Friday, August 6. But the City of Philadelphia only has enough funding to provide help for half of them, and more applications are coming in every day. No one should be surprised by this devastating result. In June, a PA Budget and Policy Center policy paper showed that the General Assembly had distributed federal funds for rental assistance in a way that shorted urban counties, which are also counties that have a higher share of Black families. The Pennsylvania General Assembly distributed emergency rental funds based on county population. At first glance, that may seem reasonable. But there is enormous variation in both the share of households that rent their homes in each county and in the cost of housing in each county. So, a population-based formula for distributing emergency rental funds short-changes our state’s urban… Continue reading

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Small Businesses and Workers Need Help From the State—And Each Other

  By Economic Development, Economic Justice, PBPC Blog posts, Small / Local Business

Thanks to the American Rescue Plan enacted by President Biden, we’re seeing the economy recover faster than people suspected was possible when we were in the depths of the pandemic recession nine months ago. But that recovery doesn’t include everyone. Small businesses and many working people are still hurting. They need Pennsylvania’s government to help them by using the 7.5 million dollars of our tax money the General Assembly refused to spend in June. Fifteen months after the beginning of the pandemic, small business revenue in Pennsylvania is still down 28% relative to pre-COVID levels. It has continued to decline in the last two months. As of June 21st, the number of small businesses open in Pennsylvania was below that at the start of 2020 by about 37%. The last two months have seen a decline of roughly 10 percentage points. Many workers remain in trouble, too. As of May 2021,… Continue reading

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PA Republican Logic: Reject The Needs of Pennsylvanians and Democracy As Well

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

Flush with $10 billion in $7.3 billion in federal funds and a $3-billion, current-year surplus—all of which comes from our taxes—the Republican majority enacted a budget that neither provides much relief from the pandemic nor includes public investments to reduce our state’s glaring economic and racial inequity. And while ignoring those problems, the Republican majority passed legislation to make voting more difficult. The inaction on the budget and the actions taken to make it harder for people to vote are connected. An overwhelming majority of the public, including a substantial number of Republicans, want American Rescue Plan funds to be invested in the people of Pennsylvania. There are many opportunities for such investment: One-tenth of the funds available this year could have been used to fund Governor Wolf’s bold $1.3-billion proposal to take a major step toward reducing our worst-in-the-nation inequality in K-12 school funding. (The $300 million in new education… Continue reading

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Statement on Need to Pivot to Reinvestment in Wake of Consolidation of PASSHE Schools

  By Higher Education, PA Budget and Policy Center, Statements

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 21, 2021 Contact: Kirstin Snow, snow@pennbpc.org Statement on need to pivot to reinvestment in wake of consolidation of PASSHE schools By Marc Stier The decision by the PASSHE board of governors to adopt a radical consolidation plan is disappointing and may ultimately be self-defeating. It accommodates, and perpetuates, a failed 40-year disinvestment in public higher education in Pennsylvania. This disinvestment threatens opportunity for many Pennsylvanians and will weaken the state’s future economy, especially in the regions anchored by PASSHE campuses. To avoid these consequences, state lawmakers need to pivot now to a reinvestment strategy, capitalizing on the federal resources in the American Rescue Plan and likely to be part of federal infrastructure legislation. Higher education remains a critical path to both individual and communal success and happiness. Yet devastating cutbacks in state funding have made the cost of attending four-year state universities, relative to median income,… Continue reading