HARRISBURG (AP) — Pennsylvania’s state budget stalemate entered what one senior lawmaker called “terra incognito” Thursday with an announcement by House Democrats they will soon uncork floor debate on a no-new-taxes Republican budget that they hope will ultimately fail.
Democratic leaders said following hours of closed-door meetings that they will allow a vote on an austerity budget proposal that passed the state Senate two months ago entirely with Republican votes.
Democrats, who control the House but not the Senate, hope to defeat any amendments, send the bill to Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell and let him decide whether to cut $1.7 billion from it with his line-item veto power or simply reject it entirely.
Their wider goal is to pressure Republicans to compromise and agree to new or expanded taxes — or other sources of revenue — that would preserve programs and avoid what they said was the prospect for thousands of state employee layoffs.
Speaker Keith McCall, D-Carbon, said that if Rendell signs the Senate Republicans’ spending plan after it is pared down further to meet the state constitution’s requirement for a balanced budget, he hoped that would result in GOP leaders coming back to the table to pass a supplemental budget that would restore some of the cuts.
“All that we’ve heard from the folks in the other chamber is a simple ’no’ message,” said House Majority Leader Todd Eachus, D-Luzerne.
Eachus’ own caucus, however, is divided on Rendell’s proposal to increase the personal income tax by 16 percent.
Senate GOP leaders have said such a broad-based tax is out of the question, and there is widespread Republican opposition even to the lesser taxes Rendell has proposed on natural gas extraction, sales of tobacco products and health care premiums.
“You might think that Senate Bill 850 took a meat cleaver to the state budget and chops off arms and legs, when in fact it was about a 2 percent reduction in spending,” Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware, said on the Senate floor Thursday.
House Republicans also are developing what they describe as a responsible alternative that can pass the House and avoid the doomsday scenarios being pushed by Democrats. They said their bill could be on Rendell’s desk by Monday.
Rep. Bill DeWeese of Greene County, the Democratic whip and a House member for more than three decades, said his party’s roll-of-the dice maneuver was something new to him.
“We are in terra incognito,” DeWeese said after a news conference with fellow leaders that described the strategy.
With his caucus members standing on the marble Capitol Rotunda steps behind him, House Minority Leader Sam Smith, R-Jefferson, told reporters that the Democrats’ plan is an extreme step that the GOP wants no part of.
“I believe that is equally as irresponsible as a tax increase at this time,” Smith said.
Eachus said Democrats will produce a spreadsheet that will outline the effect of the Senate budget bill, and said it would probably include drastic cuts to Penn State University and other schools, and the closing of nine Pennsylvania hospitals.
Pennsylvania’s tax revenues finished the fiscal year June 30 nearly $3.3 billion below projections, and the budget negotiation process has turned into a partisan stalemate that has sharply reduced the state’s ability to pay bills.
Most state workers will begin to feel the pinch July 17, when partial paychecks begin to go out. Two weeks later even those partial payments will stop.
Eight unions that represent state workers announced that on Tuesday their members will demonstrate during lunch breaks outside their work sites, and a noon rally was scheduled at the state Capitol. They are also encouraging their members to flood the phone lines of the governor and lawmakers.
As outlines of the Democratic approach began to surface earlier Thursday, Rendell spokesman Chuck Ardo would not rule out the possibility that Rendell might sign the GOP spending plan after making about $1.7 billion in additional cuts.
“You can’t exclude anything at this point,” Ardo said.
Rendell’s revised budget proposal is about $2 billion higher than the Senate Republicans’.
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