Pa. budget debate takes to television airwaves

June 25, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The state’s top Democrat and top Republican defended conflicting plans for balancing its budget in an unusual forum before a statewide television audience Wednesday night.

Less than a week before the deadline for approving a new budget, neither Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell nor Republican Senate President Joe Scarnati yielded ground in separate interviews taped earlier in the day.

Scarnati accused the governor of using scare tactics to sell an assortment of new taxes, including a proposed 16 percent boost in the personal income tax, to legislators.

“When you’re selling snake oil, you need to really up the hype, and he has upped the hype to the point where this is like a nuclear doomsday,” said Scarnati, of Jefferson County.

Scarnati said Pennsylvania should set an example by balancing its budget solely with spending cuts, as proposed in a bill passed by the GOP-controlled Senate.

Rendell said cuts must be accompanied by tax increases to avoid serious consequences, such as the layoffs of hundreds of state troopers and the loss of subsidized health care for thousands of children.

The governor, who faces resistance to his tax proposals even from some Democratic legislators, said he cited examples of how deep budget cuts would affect state services “to educate them (legislators), not to scare them, so they can make the choice.”

The interviews were taped Wednesday afternoon and evening at the Harrisburg studios of WITF-TV. All eight of the state’s public TV stations planned to air them together later in the evening.

Under the current versions of Rendell’s budget and the alternative advanced by the Senate Republican caucus, an $8 million appropriation for grants that support the stations would be eliminated because of the continuing, recession-driven decline in state tax collections.

The state faces a budget shortfall of more than $3 billion for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30.

Rendell has proposed $29 billion in spending for the next year, while the GOP bill would hold spending to $27.3 billion. GOP leaders have recently acknowledged that, because of the growing projected shortfall, the spending cuts they propose are already more than $1 billion shy of what is needed to balance that budget.

Scarnati said that, during past economic downturns, Pennsylvania has scared business away by increasing taxes. He said demonstrating financial discipline would help turn that around.