Business Taxes

For Rep. Steve Bloom (R-Cumberland), it’s time to turn Harrisburg’s troubles over to a higher authority. Partial and late budgets, declining credit ratings, costly and error plagued state contracts, and a trail of corrupt officials are symptoms of deep structural problems, he says, and a constitutional convention is the only way to fix them. “These are issues the Legislature is either unwilling or unfit to take care of,” Bloom said.

The General Assembly returns to Harrisburg this week in search of more than $2 billion to fully fund, as required by law, the $32 billion spending plan that was sent to the governor last Friday. The available options are all unwelcome: borrowing; more gambling; increasing taxes; shifting money between funds.

Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) rightly characterizes President Trump’s tax reform plan as one that will result in well-paying jobs --“The best economic stimulus for the middle class,” he said in a statement.

He also noted that massive increases in government spending and nearly $2 trillion in taxes under President Obama delivered the opposite: “The slowest lowest post-recession recovery since World War II, weak job growth, and stagnant household income.”

When the layers of Governor Tom Wolf’s latest budget proposal are peeled away during the legislative budget hearings that begin next week, Pennsylvanians will see a rogues gallery of job-killing tax increases from across the decades – some defeated, some repealed – back to haunt our economy.

The General Assembly and Governor Tom Wolf are still working towards a budget agreement, which, as of this writing, will likely be finalized in the weeks following the June 30 deadline. While no one facing re-election wants to repeat last year’s bruising nine-month budget battle, the kind words exchanged about this year’s budget talks have failed to produce a balanced spending plan for 2016-2017.

Disagreements over revenue – how much is needed and how to raise it – interrupted the process just before the July 4 weekend, but now must be resolved.

Spending restraint and opposition to tax hikes by Republican lawmakers over the past five years have likely kept Pennsylvania from entering a fiscal death spiral. A new study by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, which compares solvency and other fiscal health indicators among the states and Puerto Rico, places Pennsylvania near the bottom, floundering with the high tax and spend states of New York, California and Maryland. More spending and taxes over the past five years would have surely moved us closer to Puerto Rico’s bankrupt nightmare.

On Tuesday, Governor Tom Wolf brazenly scolded House and Senate Republican lawmakers instead of presenting a budget proposal to an equal branch of government. The budget fiasco now consuming Harrisburg, he said, is the result of Republicans playing politics and ignoring the math. He then went on a political tirade, saying throughout the address that lawmakers were risking the welfare, and even the lives, of the elderly and children.

The problem? He’s the one whose math is wrong.