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<\/p>\nThe State Senate will stand in recess until next week as both sides negotiate a deal.<\/p>\n
HARRISBURG, Pa. \u2014 Pennsylvania lawmakers missed another state budget deadline Tuesday, with negotiations continuing between Senate Republicans, House Democrats and Gov. Josh Shapiro over a spending plan for the 2026-27 fiscal year.<\/p>\n
While no agreement has been reached, leaders from both parties say talks have made significant progress and remain optimistic that a final budget deal can be completed in the coming days.<\/p>\n
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Among the priorities for Democratic leaders in the House and Senate is raising Pennsylvania’s minimum wage, which has remained unchanged for 20 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Democratic lawmakers marked the milestone Tuesday morning with a rally in the Capitol Rotunda, calling for an increase for workers across the commonwealth.<\/p>\n
“They feed our people, but they don’t have a livable wage,” said State Sen. Vince Hughes (D-Philadelphia). “They provide childcare services, but they don’t have a livable wage. They do the hard work that most of the people in this building, if they were asked to do that job, would run away from it.”<\/p>\n
Republican leaders in both chambers remain focused on the overall size of the state budget, saying they hope to keep total spending below the $53.3 billion proposal Gov. Shapiro introduced in February.<\/p>\n
“Obviously, the numbers are still a concern, given what the governor had proposed back in February, but I do think that good faith negotiations are underway, and I’m very optimistic,” said State Rep. Jim Struzzi (R-Indiana).<\/p>\n
Despite the missed June 30 deadline, leaders on both sides of the aisle say they want to avoid a repeat of last year’s prolonged budget negotiations, which stretched 135 days beyond the constitutional deadline.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think there’s any appetite in any of the caucuses or the administration that’s going to have us here for a prolonged period of time,” said Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa (D-Allegheny). “We know what harm that causes to organizations and nonprofits and school districts and alike, and we don’t want to get on that path.”<\/p>\n
Senate Democrats said they had hoped to complete the budget this week, criticizing Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R-Indiana) in a press conference after he called the Senate to a recess until next week to continue negotiations.<\/p>\n
“We cannot hurt our school districts, our counties, our most vulnerable, by continuing, habitually, putting up with a Senate that does not work and does not come to work,” said House Majority Leader Matt Bradford (D-Montgomery).<\/p>\n
Gov. Shapiro released a statement on Tuesday evening sharing the same sentiments.<\/p>\n
“I introduced my budget 147 days ago. The House passed theirs 77 days ago, the Senate has only come to work 24 days. And on the day they should be sending a budget to my desk, they decided to go home on vacation. I think it’s disrespectful to the people of Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
“They [Senate Republicans] should be here and they should be working. We should work through this and finish the job together, and instead, they ran away.”<\/p>\n
Pittman defended the timeline and expressed confidence that negotiators are close to reaching an agreement.<\/p>\n
“We will in fact need our teams, our staff members of leadership teams to have conversations over the next several days, but I am highly confident that we are well on track to deliver a responsible budget, and there is no reason that we cannot conclude our work early next week,\u201d Pittman said. \u201cThere will be discomfort at all levels, but we will meet in the middle. We will conclude this process, I believe, in the next several days with a responsible product.”<\/p>\n
Although the Senate has adjourned for the remainder of the week, the Pennsylvania House still has voting sessions scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday as budget negotiations continue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The State Senate will stand in recess until next week as both sides negotiate a deal. HARRISBURG, Pa.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-232444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}