Republican state Reps. Scott Boyd and Bryan Cutler were among a group of GOP lawmakers who drafted a letter to the president encouraging him to examine their 14-bill health care-reform package.
“We recognize that you may not approve of every suggestion offered, but we are open to suggestions that may help us find an agreement in principle while we work out the details of the legislation,” the letter reads. “We believe that by working together we can use Pennsylvania as a demonstration project to show that health care reform can rise above politics and be based only on what is best for those we live with, work with, and serve.”
Boyd and Cutler are members of the House GOP’s Health Care Task Force. They have drafted or cosponsored bills that would create affordable, low-cost insurance plans; allow more residents to enroll in the adultBasic program; use federal stimulus money to help bring technology online for the prevention of medical errors and greater efficiency; and provide tax credits to employers who provide insurance for their workers and individuals who buy it on their own.
If you can’t get enough of Chris Matthews’ freewheeling, in-your-face style of punditry on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” here’s a chance to get your fix in person. Matthews will be at Franklin & Marshall College next Wednesday night to talk about health care reform, the state of the economy and President Barack Obama’s poll ratings.
The event, being held at F&M’s Barshinger Center for Musical Arts, is free and open to the public but tickets are required. “A Political Conversation with Chris Matthews begins at 8:30 p.m. Matthews is being hosted by F&M’s Center for Politics & Public Affairs and the Department of Government. “The government department is very excited that Chris Matthews will be on campus, and we expect him to bring the same intensity to the campus that he displays every night on television,” said Robert C. Gray, chairman of the government department.
Doors will open at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are available at the Franklin & Marshall Box Office, located inside the Roschel Performing Arts Center. The hours are noon to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Moderating the discussion will be G. Terry Madonna, director of F&M’s Center for Politics and Public Affairs. Also appearing during the program will be attorney Stanley M. Brand, a 1970 F&M grad who served as general counsel to former House Speaker Tip O’Neill.
John Baer of the Philly Daily News is today’s must-read.
We ought to start sending sheep to the Legislature. I know you think we already do, but I mean for real. Hear me out. We save a ton of money even if we phase them in. Most sheep don’t drive so we save on taxpayer-financed car leases and mileage. They don’t need golden-fleece health benefits or fat pensions; we just put them out to pasture. We save a bundle on catered Capitol meals costing taxpayers nearly $250,000 during the last legislative session ($20,550 in one day), according to a recent report in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Heck, sheep can eat grass in Capitol Park and on highway medians around Harrisburg.
We save on the cost of lawmakers’ per diems, $30,000 to $50,000 a day. Sheep are easy to herd, rarely go on the lam and the influence of special interests would decline - I can think of only a few lobbyists who’d want to take sheep out. And, really, is there is any better argument for reducing humans in our overlarge, overstaffed, underperforming Legislature than Gov. Ed’s comments while announcing the state budget agreement last Friday?
The Guv withheld specifics because he didn’t want rank-and-file members (that would be, oh, 247 of the 253 legislators) to learn the details in the media. This, of course, is because just six “leaders” negotiated budget terms. Most lawmakers had virtually nothing to do with the deal. The vast majority actually learns details only from the media.
Brad Bumsted of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has Rendell on the record:
“This budget is not balanced for this year, and it’s a billion dollars short for next year,” Rendell said in Pittsburgh. He said he plans to tell the legislative leaders who announced the agreement that he would “absolutely” veto the measure.
“If they override it, they override it,” Rendell said. “They pay the price next year when there’s a billion (dollar) deficit.”
Gov. Ed Rendell’s office is putting the finishing touches on a statement opposing the so-called budget agreement reached by three of the four legislative caucuses, a spokesman said. But his chief of staff, Steve Crawford, told The Post-Gazette Rendell cannot support the plan.
The spending proposal by Senate Republican and Democratic leaders and House Democrat leaders — which is already more than two months late — fails on three key criteria, he said.
It makes reductions in key education programs, such as pre-kindergarten programs and school accountability block grants; it reduces important health care program, such as the Children’s Health Insurance Program; and it seriously overestimates recurring revenue for fiscal 2009-10 by as much as $500 million, he said.
He said Mr. Rendell wants to continue working with legislative leaders to reach a budget deal that he can sign, but “based on the numbers and analysis to date, he would not be able to support it.”
Without enough sustainable, recurring tax revenue this year, the state would need to enact a tax increase next summer to fill a deficit, and Mr. Rendell doesn’t want to do that, Mr. Crawford said.
You decide. From Capitolwire.com Bureau Chief Peter L. DeCoursey:
HARRISBURG (Sept. 10) – A $27.945 billion proposed budget is expected to be announced Friday morning at a joint press conference of leaders of the House Democrats, Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats.
House Democrats were ardently lobbying Rendell to agree to the deal Thursday night, administration officials said, but the governor was holding out. Chief-of-Staff Steve Crawford said at about 8:30 p.m. Thursday: “If there is a deal at this point, it doesn’t include us.
“The governor has said all throughout this process he would sign a budget if it met three goals,” Crawford said. “Those are that it have sustainable revenues sufficient for at least the next two years, and no further cuts in education and health care. The document they gave us, the document we saw and analyzed today, falls short on all three fronts.”
Budget negotiators say the proposed state spending plan will be funded by about $1 billion in new recurring revenues, which include a new 25-cent tax hike on cigarettes to garner $114 million, a rededicated cigarette tax for a similar amount, a $373 million revenue increase from restoring the Capital Stock and Franchise levy to its 2008 level of 2.89 mills from its 2009 level of 1.89 mills and a new sales tax on the tickets and punch cards and other items used in small games of chance, for $100 million this year. The plan projects $100 million to come from leasing more state lands for natural-gas drilling, and about another $100 million from legalizing table games.
Administration revenue analysts disputed that those measures would garner as much as legislative leaders said. For example, they said the $200 million to be raised by the small games of chance tickets tax and new natural gas drilling leases would actually be $64 million.
Crawford and budget negotiators said the budget proposal contained no “off-line” or “off-budget” items used to artificially lower the total spending number.
State lawmakers are nearing a handshake agreement on the budget, according to various media outlets. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports tonight that “aides confirmed that the administration and legislative leaders have agreed on an overall spending figure of roughly $28 billion - less than Rendell had sought but more than Senate Republicans were initially willing to appropriate.” Stay tuned.
U.S. Rep. Joe Pitts’ office released the following statement this morning on President Barack Obama’s call for passage of sweeping health-care legislation Wednesday night:
“I don’t really know whether this speech is going to change things for the President. He continues to support a deeply unpopular government-run public option and, while he paid lip service to tort reform, it remains to be seen whether the plans in the House or Senate will seek to rein in the outrageous costs of lawsuits and defensive medicine. We need real bipartisan reform and I think we could get it if President Obama would really listen to the solutions being offered by Republicans. While he says he has an open door, he hasn’t met with House Republican leaders since April. Buying off two or three Republican votes isn’t true bipartisanship. In August, people across the country voiced their opposition to government-run healthcare, it doesn’t sound like the President was listening.”
