Taylor Says Pa. Budget Standoff Will Last For Weeks

by Tony West

STATE REP. John Taylor predicts budget impasse in Harrisburg will last till beginning of December.

Don’t hold your breath while you’re waiting for the Pennsylvania budget impasse to be resolved.

That’s the advice of State Rep. John Taylor (R-Northeast). This experienced legislator often plays a pivotal background role in urban-policy issues within the majority Republican caucus in the House of Representatives.

While the latest round of negotiations and votes has produced nothing tangible yet, Taylor allowed “the debate has narrowed almost by accident.” It is now clear, he said in a press conference last week, that none of the bold initiatives Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf introduced with fanfare earlier this year will become law this session.

But Republicans and Democrats still stand far apart. And Taylor doesn’t expect them to move closer together for another six weeks.

That’s because, he said, few voters are feeling the pain yet. Most major government-funded services are continuing, thanks to creative financing stopgap measures.

But Taylor expects school districts across the state to start imposing drastic cuts around Dec. 1. That’s when irate constituents will set legislators’ phones to ringing.

Only pressure from hometown parents will move some of his GOP colleagues to support revenue increases, said Taylor – and even then, many never will.

In the end, though, he said, major revenue increases are inevitable. With the Commonwealth facing a budget deficit of over $2 billion, Taylor asserted there is “no room for billion-dollar cuts.” Education and welfare have already taken all the hits they can afford during the Corbett years. “People don’t realize most ‘welfare’ money actually goes to senior citizens,” he noted – not a voter bloc that Republicans are inclined to bash.

Required, then, is a major revenue increase. But Taylor dismissed proposals by both Democrats (for a natural-gas extraction tax) and Republicans (for smokeless tobacco and gambling) as falling way short of the mark.

By contrast, Taylor said, a hike in the personal income tax from $3.07% to $3.57% would bring in about $1 billion.

The House of Representatives’ resounding defeat of a tax increase was “symbolic,” said Taylor. “You cannot seriously support any taxing plan until you first have a spending plan,” he insisted.
Taylor had harsh words for both sides in the standoff.

The 31-year-old veteran deplored the long decline of legislative leadership. In the past, he said, the leaders of both parties got together to work out compromises necessary to balance the budget – a deed required by law in Harrisburg, unlike Washington. But today, he said, “the leaders are following, not leading,” their unruliest, most-combative backbenchers. The result is no one wants to tell the estimated 80% of Republicans who will not vote for a tax increase that they have to anyway.

But Taylor also criticized the approach of Gov. Wolf, who he believes has harmed his own cause with belligerent partisanship.

To overcome the fanatical anti-taxers, Wolf and the Democrats need to woo moderate Republicans to their side. Usually this is done by asking them to back educational spending, which is popular among suburbanites, especially in the state’s Southeast.

Instead, charged Taylor, Democratic campaign strategists bashed Southeastern moderate Republicans with negative mass mailings – as many as six or seven of them. “You can imagine how [State Rep.] Kate Harper (R-Montgomery) feels now,” he commented sardonically. Thus few Republicans are interested in making deals across the aisle right now.

It’s a fact of modern political life deplored by Taylor, who takes pride in his ability to make government work. “People who aren’t willing to solve problems shouldn’t be in this business,” he said.

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