House debate on budget an exercise in futility?

HARRISBURG - There shall, starting today, begin a mighty debate in the House about the state budget.

There will likely be fist-pounding speeches and dramatic proclamations about the future of Pennsylvania. At some point in time, there might even be a vote.

Yet many who have closely followed the budget impasse this year say it will amount to little more than busywork.

That is because the spending plan the House could begin deliberating as early as this week contains steep cuts, and is being used by Democrats as little more than a bargaining chip to force a break in the budget deadlock between Gov. Rendell and Republican lawmakers.

"I wish I could say it's sincere, but it seems more like filler," said Chris Borick, a politics professor at Muhlenberg College.

Political analyst G. Terry Madonna put it this way: "It's part process, part politics. But given the craziness up there, they have to do something."

The budget in question is known in the Capitol simply as Senate Bill 850. It is the $27.3 billion spending plan introduced months ago by Republicans who control the Senate, and contains painful cuts to state spending but no tax increases.

Democrats, including those who control the House, have made no secret of their opposition to it and have said over and over that it would translate into damaging cuts to social, educational, and economic-development programs.

And even now that the House is set to vote on it, those same Democrats still say they could not support it.

"It's all very confusing," said Borick. "It's hard to make sense of what they're doing."

Democratic leaders say they back Rendell's almost $29 billion budget plan that proposes a mixture of spending cuts and increased taxes, including a temporary 16 percent increase in the state's personal-income tax.

Yet Republicans have taken a staunch antitax stance - and have not budged from it. Complicating matters: Some rank-and-file Democrats won't vote for a higher personal-income tax, either. And the state is now almost two weeks past the July 1 deadline to enact a spending plan for the fiscal year, with not even a pretense of a resolution in sight. Most state workers will soon be expected to work without pay, and vendors could also stop receiving payments from the state.

So late last week, after a flurry of urgent, backdoor meetings, Democratic leaders decided to allow a vote on Senate Bill 850, if only to gain a platform from which to argue how catastrophic its cuts would be.

"I don't know how else to get this resolved," said Rep. Dwight Evans (D., Phila.), chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee. "I don't think there is a silver bullet or magic answer. . . . The only way I know is we must talk to each other, we must meet, and we must work together."

Today, Evans' committee is scheduled to vote out SB 850. After that, the earliest it could come up for a floor vote, because of House rules, would be the end of the month. However, the rules could be suspended to allow for earlier deliberations.

Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R., Delaware), for one, said he was tired of all the rhetoric but no action.

He said it was the responsibility of elected officials to vote on a spending plan, whether Rendell's or the Senate Republican one. SB 850 was approved weeks ago in the upper chamber.

"There is a lot of talk," Pileggi said, "but it's a grand diversion from the fact that the members of the House of Representatives . . . still have not taken any action on a bill. They need to take a stand."

But the bottom line, said Borick, is that the two sides are no closer to reaching a deal, even with the debate pending on SB 850. No talks were scheduled between Rendell and legislative leaders over the weekend, and it is unclear when the next meeting will be.

Said Madonna: "It's hard to even describe what is going on over there. And it's both inexplicable and very unsatisfactory to the citizens of this state that they've left the state in this lurch."