Even before taking office, in one of the brashest “you’re all on my team” appeals any politician has ever made to the media, Gov. Tom Wolf was already blaming Republicans for his impending struggles.
The funny part is, he was probably right — back then, at least, and for reasons different than he might think.
The blame game continues as the budget stalemate drags on. The “dark money” ads from the governor’s Democratic allies that we saw last summer are back on the air, this time blaming “warring” Republican factions in Harrisburg for the lack of progress.
Other 501(c)(4) organizations involved in this endless campaigning lean more to the Republican side of the budget battle, but their ads tend to advocate specific positions (anti-shale tax, pro-pension reform) rather than make partisan slams.
If we cut through the tiresome spinning, what and who would we really find to blame for our budget woes?
In December 2014, immediately following a mid-year budget briefing from the soon-departing Corbett administration, Gov.-elect Wolf made comments that should still be eliciting guffaws:
“I do not want to go into this with anybody being under the misapprehension that somehow I caused this,” he said. “I want to make sure we’re all in agreement that I’m inheriting a big problem here.”
Since he was talking to the media and fellow Democrats, most were probably already quite sympathetic to his cause.
But it’s not as though information on the state’s fiscal situation wasn’t available during the campaign cycle. It was, and Mr. Wolf chose to promise funding increases for education and tax cuts for the middle class anyway.
And it’s not as though his predecessor hadn’t also inherited a huge mess. Mr. Corbett handled it better than advertised, the thanks for which was getting booted from office.
Maybe Mr. Corbett’s woefully bad public relations efforts were what Mr. Wolf is trying to learn from and avoid. Maybe that explains his bald “I’m inheriting a big problem” pitch and his fellow governors’ attack ads.
But the budget figures released back in December 2014, just before his inauguration, compared revenues and spending, both projected and actual, through quite a few budget cycles, and the good news is that Mr. Corbett’s Harrisburg kept spending well below what had been projected — within shouting distance of actual revenues most years and with a tiny surplus his final year.
And — here’s the most important point — this was achieved despite the fact that outlays for pensions more than tripled during Mr. Corbett’s term, from $500 million to $1.7 billion.
After Mr. Wolf’s “I inherited this mess” news conference, his fellow Democrats decried “one-time revenue sources” that allowed the Republican administration to finish well.
But think back four years: Then-Gov. Corbett also inherited a fiscal mess, and when a “one-time revenue source” known as the “Obama stimulus” spiked state spending and then disappeared, Mr. Corbett and his party were pilloried for so-called budget “cuts.” So, dear Democrats, live by the sword, die by the sword.
The obvious truth is that both governors, Mr. Corbett and Mr. Wolf, could blame those who preceded them. The state’s pension obligation is the real budget buster, and we taxpayers are saddled with that thanks to … Republicans.
It was Gov. Tom Ridge and a Republican-controlled Legislature that upgraded state employees’ pensions from the Cadillac model to the Mercedes-Benz — back in the pre-9/11, rah-rah days when no end to the tech-based economic expansion could be imagined.
Their predecessors having caused the problem, current Republicans failed to tackle pension reform — even with both the Legislature and the governors’ mansion under their control. I expect better of a party that touts itself as the party of fiscal sobriety, and if they truly hail from fail-safe gerrymandered districts, as beleaguered Democrats like to claim, then there should have been no downside.
But Republicans are requiring reform now, probably hoping the Democratic governor will bear at least some of the public sector unions’ wrath, especially during the next election cycle.
As for the new governor, whatever he “inherited,” he found several ways to make it all worse — failing to use his line-item veto, failing until this month to release funds to our schools (thus forcing them to borrow money to operate), failing to learn to barter with the opposition.
There’s plenty of blame to spread around, but nothing gets done in politics until we’re all truly at the end of our collective rope. We’re there now.
Ruth Ann Dailey: ruthanndailey@hotmail.com
First Published: January 11, 2016, 2:57 p.m.
