Budget Conference Panel Tries Again

With private negotiations stalled and the budget impasse 2 months old, the Pennsylvania House/Senate conference committee will reconvene in Harrisburg Tuesday morning
The last time this happened, the session devolved into bickering, and no real progress was made.
Political scientist Terry Madonna of Franklin and Marshall College says he doesn’t expect much more this time, mostly due to the meeting’s public nature.

"The problem with doing it in public is that the sausage making part of it could turn out to be ugly. I’ll give you A, you give me B. you want this aspect of a policy in health care, you give me this aspect of a policy in education."

Madonna says that type of blunt negotiating is better suited for private sessions. The gap is closing—Democrats and Republicans were two billion dollars apart when the impasse began.
Their current “spend numbers” are separated by just 400-million dollars now.