Shapiro’s $51.4B opening bid spends big on Pennsylvania’s ‘rise’

(The Center Square) – It’s a new year, and with it comes a time-honored tradition in Pennsylvania: the unveiling of the governor’s spending proposal.

On Tuesday, Gov. Josh Shapiro proffered the biggest one yet: $51.4 billion that critics say spends $3 billion more than what the state can afford.

For the administration and its allies, however, it’s a mere downpayment on the state’s education adequacy gap, its crumbling mass transit system and ballooning health care needs for a growing senior population.

And, to Shapiro, it’s necessary to keep Pennsylvania “on the rise.”

“Each of the last two years both Democrats and Republicans have voted for commonsense budgets that solve real problems,” Shapiro said from the House speaker’s podium before a joint session of the Legislature on Tuesday. “We’ve moved the ball down the field and put points on the board – and we should celebrate that. But we should be hungry for more.”

At a glance, Shapiro’s definition of more includes more than $800 million for schools – from student support to building remediation to teacher stipends –  $290 million for mass transit and hundreds of millions on business tax credits and economic program investments. Another $2 billion will fund human services programs, many of which come with federally mandated spending increases.

He also bets the state can raise nearly $1 billion by legalizing recreational marijuana and regulating skill games, though this would fall short of balancing the plan and drain the state’s emergency savings account.

It’s for these reasons that the Republican-controlled Senate balked at the proposal during a news conference Tuesday afternoon.

“It was a very informational speech, and we can without a doubt say that Governor Shapiro has a real appetite for spending,” said President Pro Tempore Kim Ward, R-Greensburg. “This is the third year in a row we are going to spend a lot more, billions more, than what we have.”

For his part, Shapiro expected what he described as reflexive opposition to his proposals in what’s becoming an increasingly more common facet of his public comments: Taking Senate Republicans to task for their policy positions he sees as a hindrance to economic growth.

One of those critiques he mentioned again during his address was an unwillingness to raise the hourly minimum wage to $15. Republicans have argued doing so would eliminate jobs for the very people it purports to help – low-income parents, particularly single mothers.

For Democrats, it’s a “bold plan from a visionary.” Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Pittsburgh, said the proposal is a “serious and comprehensive budget that talks about the important things that Pennsylvania wants to talk about.”

“I could go on and on and on with the list of things, but at the end of the day, we have opportunities to be able to continue to grow Pennsylvania,” he said. “That’s what’s exciting about it.”