Spending and tax bills approved by the Republican-controlled Senate earlier today are on their way to the House, where Democrats are threatening to strip $12 million in what they believe are discretionary grants from the $27.8 billion plan and quickly send it back to the Senate. Senate Republicans, meantime, say those $12 million in line items aren’t WAMs, short for “walking around money,” short for “discretionary grants.”
Erik Arneson, a spokesman for Senate Republicans, sent the following memo around this morning:
There are no “WAMs” in the spending plan approved by the Senate today with overwhelming bipartisan support (Senate Bill 1085, which passed 43 to 6). It was made perfectly clear at this morning’s meeting of legislative leaders that any funding decisions necessary to implement the 2009-10 state budget contained in SB 1085 will be made exclusively by the Rendell administration. In fact, the governor’s chief of staff directly said, “There are no WAMs in this budget.” That includes all of the line items which House Democratic leaders claim are “WAMs.”
It is beyond comprehension that House Democratic leaders want to cut funding for health care clinics, acute care hospitals, the Safe Neighborhoods program, the Violence Reduction program, and the Minority Business Development program. At the same time they are proposing these cuts, they are proposing to increase House legislative accounts by $11 million. So the House is proposing to cut funding for health clinics, acute care hospitals, and the Safe Neighborhoods program in order to spend that money on themselves. The House should take up SB 1085 promptly and end this budget impasse.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh will give “A Report from Washington” at Franklin & Marshall College on Thursday, Oct. 29, at 7:30 p.m. The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held at F&M’s Barshinger Center for the Musical Arts in Hensel Hall. It is co-sponsored by the Center for Liberal Arts & Society, the Government Department, the Philadelphia Alumni Writers House and the Weinstein Lecture Fund.
Hersh was a reporter for the New York Times from 1972-79 and has been a freelance writer since. He has been a regular contributor to The New Yorker since 1993. Hersh’s journalism and publishing awards include a Pulitzer Prize for his exposure of the My Lai massacre and cover up during the Vietnam War, five George Polk Awards, two National Magazine Awards, and more than a dozen other prizes for investigative reporting. He has published eight books including, most recently, Chain of Command, which as based on his reporting on Abu Ghraib for The New Yorker. His book prizes include the 1983 National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times award for biography, and a Sidney Hillman Foundation award for The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House.
Rep. John C. Bear, a Lititz Republican, scheduled a rally in support of a bill that would end project labor agreements in Pennsylvania, contracts he says reward unions with large contracts and drive up the cost of taxpayer-funded projects.
The local trade unions found out about it. They drowned out the lawmaker’s supporters with chants of “Bear’s gotta go, Bear’s gotta go.”
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.
