Brief Budget Meeting, No Movement

Last night’s budget meeting lasted just twenty minutes, and both sides remain far apart. It’s now been a week since Pennsylvania’s legal budget deadline, and legislative leaders still aren’t any closer to striking a deal with Governor Rendell.
At last night’s brief meeting, the governor proposed 72 million dollars worth of new cuts, though his office says those won’t become public until leaders agree to them.
Senate Republican spokesman Erik Arneson says that’s a step in the right direction, but points out the two sides are still more than a billion dollars apart.

"The governor wants a five billion tax increase over three years, and we want to balance the budget by living within our means and not raising taxes."

And if you ask Democrats, they’d say Rendell’s proposal is the only reality-based plan on the table, and the GOP prefers to take shots at it, rather than put together their own balanced budget. Rendell spokesman Chuck Ardo says Republicans are being stubborn.

"At this point, what we’ve got is the governor having proposed a balanced budget in February, having made hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts. And the Republicans standing pat and demanding that he do more."

The next meeting could come as soon as today, though nothing’s been finalized yet.