Copyright Mechanicsburg Patriot News
Gov. Josh Shapiro signed the $50.1 billion budget bill on Wednesday, ending a near five-month legislative stalemate that compromises on overall spending, yet includes more dollars for schools, an earned income tax credit for lower paid workers and removes an environmental regulation on fossil fuels sought by Republicans. Lawmakers in both the Republican-majority Senate and Democratic-majority House worked fast Wednesday to push through the core pieces of the deal, amending existing bills with hundreds of pages of new budget language in order to fast-track the process. “We stayed at the table and demanded a serious budget,” Shapiro. said. “[The budget] continues the investments that have been critical to the resurgence” of Pennsylvania’s economy. The budget centers on a $50.1 billion appropriation from the general fund, the state’s main operating account. This is a 4.7% hike over the 2024-25 budget, but a middle-ground from Shapiro’s original budget framework which featured $51.5 million in baseline spending. The deal contains a multitude of compromises and concessions which party leaders in both chambers have worked to sell to their members. As Sen. Wayne Langerholc, R-Cambria County, noted during his floor remarks, it is almost certain that none of his colleagues on either side of the aisle love everything in the deal – nor do they hate everything in it. The most-discussed trade-off was a provision that will cut off Pennsylvania’s ability to move forward in joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a cap-and-trade program to limit power plant pollution. Pennsylvania began the process of joining RGGI under former Gov. Tom Wolf, but Republicans challenged the legality of this, and the matter has been tied up in court – a case which is soon to be rendered moot. Some progressive Democrats have staunchly opposed giving up on RGGI, but others were swayed to support the final budget deal given that it also includes other items that Democrats have long sought, including Shapiro’s desired increases to K-12 education funding as well as scaling back school districts’ payments to cyber charters. The boost to public education subsidies, combined with Medicaid cost growth, make up about $1.5 billion in new spending, more than half the overall budget increase. Republican leaders touted permitting reforms that are expected to speed up business development, as well as new reporting requirements on certain public benefits, as reasons that they agreed to a spending bill that was higher than they wanted – although some hardline conservatives said these were only token concessions. The spending bill cleared the House 156-to-47, with all but one of the votes against coming from Republicans. In the Senate, the bill saw a 40-9 split, with two Democrats and seven Republicans opposed. The fiscal code bill - which included the RGGI abrogation, as well as a laundry list of other measures, including a bipartisan-supported tax credit for lower-income working families – saw a similar split in the Senate, and received only 14 votes in opposition in the House.
