The Morning File: 'Hate last year's state budget? You'll hate this one even more!'
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Gov. Tom Corbett delivers a budget address to the General Assembly Tuesday, touting his spending plan and policy agenda for Pennsylvania in 2012-13.
Normally, The Morning File would have sources feeding us advance dope (no pun intended) about the governor's announcements. Unfortunately, all of those sources are either incarcerated due to political corruption; homeless from economic calamities and thus unreachable; or unreliable because of brain damage caused by sports concussions.
Therefore, we'll just try to wing it -- or as we journalists like to say in news meetings whenever we're flummoxed, "Let's just make up some stories!" So here's what the governor might say:
Greetings, distinguished lawmaker and 252 other legislators present. I regret to tell you that we here in Pennsylvania are in one sorry state, but I pledge we can overcome this because I am a man of conviction -- every bit as much as Rep. Bill DeWeese should be. Sorry, Bill -- just a little ex-attorney-general humor there.
A year ago at this time I presented to you one of the most draconian, tight-fisted, stingy, unhelpful budgets of Pennsylvania's modern era. It was wonderful, and together we succeeded in getting much of it passed. I stand here proudly today to tell you that if you liked last year's cutbacks, you'll love this new budget even more.
Sure, it'd be great if we could all go back to some "Fantasy Island" version of Pennsylvania, where we fed our hungry families, saved our mass transit systems and paid for a sufficient number of teachers, but the era we inhabit is more like "Survivor" -- someone has to get voted out each week. My vote, personally, is against welfare moms, but I'm flexible.
The fact is we've got a half-billion dollar gap between our revenue and expenses this year. Can you imagine trying to run a household like that? It would be like if your wife took the credit card to Costco and kept buying giant jars of pretzels, even though there's no money in the account and there's enough pretzels to last through 2018. And yes, I use that analogy because that's what my wife keeps doing, so big pretzel party at the governor's mansion this Friday night, everyone -- stop on by, if you can.
There are some Chicken Littles out there on the transportation front, screaming about how roads, bridges and mass transit will all fall apart if they don't get more state aid. What they forget is that our health care costs have been skyrocketing because of obesity.
First Published February 6, 2012 12:00 am
