Blue Pennsylvania: Happy Independence Day
- Jul 4
- 3 min read
For the fifth straight year, the General Assembly has failed to pass a state budget by its Constitutional deadline of June 30.
To recap, Governor Josh Shapiro proposed a $53.3 billion budget in February. The PA House authorized that sum in April. The state senate, however, has not made any proposals or taken any votes since then. They are currently on summer break until the end of September.
One of the refrains that we continue to hear from the Republican dominated state senate is that there is simply not enough new money in the budget for all of the services – such as schools, transit, health care, and SNAP benefits – that Democrats feel are essential.
They tell their constituents that they are fighting to keep taxes down by keeping government spending down. What they are actually doing is increasing the pressure to raise taxes by refusing to consider new revenue streams.
For example, recreational marijuana is legal in every state surrounding Pennsylvania, with the exception of West Virginia. The state senate has continually blocked marijuana legalization even though Governor Shapiro expects that revenues from taxes on the product would generate $1.3 billion over five years. To justify the senate’s intransigence on the matter as being a “Republican thing”, however, may be a tad too simplistic. Idaho, Missouri, Montana, and Ohio all have Republican governors and legislatures, as well as legalized marijuana. Clearly, there is something unique about the brand of Republican in charge of the Pennsylvania senate that is definitely more troublesome than their counterparts in other Republican legislatures.
Severance taxes on fossil fuels are even more egregious. Republican states such as North Dakota, Wyoming, and Texas all have state budgets that are dependent upon fossil fuel severance taxes. Meanwhile, Republican politicians in Pennsylvania are telling their constituents that severance taxes will take away jobs from Pennsylvanians. That reasoning may play well in Bradford County, but how many jobs would Bensalem and Pottstown lose with a severance tax? How many jobs have been lost in Texas and North Dakota because of severance taxes?
Where the state senate really has a hard time justifying their lack of initiative is in maintaining the state’s minimum wage at $7.25/hr. One of Shapiro’s proposals approved by the PA House was to raise the minimum wage incrementally to $15/hour by 2029. Pennsylvania is one of only 20 states that still have a minimum wage of $7.25/hour. Such a boost, would, according to the Department of Human Services, increase state revenues by $80 million. Last Wednesday, Republicans in the state senate voted unanimously to kill a Democratic effort to raise the minimum wage to $15/hr.
Again, the typical Republican response to such an initiative is that raising the minimum wage costs jobs, but a statistical review of 144 studies conducted by Cornell University concluded that raising minimum wages does “not significantly threaten to raise unemployment.”
This graph also makes it pretty obvious that those states that have raised the minimum wage don’t differ a whole lot from states where the minimum wage remains at $7.25/hr.
Sources: https://www.ncsl.org/labor-and-employment/state-minimum-wages & https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm
Republican states, such as Arkansas, Florida, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota, and West Virginia have all raised their minimum wages above $7.25/hour. Why is Pennsylvania still behind?
The three incumbent senators below continue to be a part of the problem. As long as these politicians are in office, they will
not seek out the types of revenue sources we need to make Pennsylvania a healthy state, with a well-educated, and well compensated populace. Click on the links below to see how you can help. And while you are at it, click on our recommendations for the PA House seats as well
PA Senate
Candidate (Democrat) | District | Count(y/ies) | Incumbent (Republican) |
SD-6 | Bucks | Frank Farry | |
SD-16 | Bucks/Lehigh | Jarrett Coleman | |
SD-24 | Berks/Montgomery | Tracy Pennycuick |
PA House
Candidate (Democrat) | District | Count(y/ies) | Incumbent (Republican) |
HD-142 | Bucks | Joe Hogan | |
HD-137 | Northampton | Joe Emrick | |
HD-160 | Chester/Delaware | Craig Williams |
Thanks,
Coleman
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