{"id":42628,"date":"2025-11-23T21:07:44","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T21:07:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/42628\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T21:07:44","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T21:07:44","slug":"pennsylvania-budget-deal-not-at-all-to-do-with-election-republican-leader-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/42628\/","title":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania budget deal \u2018not at all\u2019 to do with election, Republican leader says"},"content":{"rendered":"

HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) \u2014 Two months into Pennsylvania\u2019s budget stalemate, Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R) said his caucus would be open to a $49 billion plan<\/a> to end the gridlock.<\/p>\n

But a final deal \u2014 which landed on a not very different $50.09 billion \u2014 wouldn\u2019t come for another two months<\/a>, leaving municipalities and counties scraping for funding during a parallel federal shutdown. Some wondered if the date of the deal, just a week after Election Day, had anything to do with it.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot at all,\u201d Pittman said in an interview with This Week in Pennsylvania<\/a>. \u201cWhat people don\u2019t realize outside of this building is it takes days and days to put the words on paper, and at the end of the day, the words on paper matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Get the latest Pennsylvania politics and election news with abc27 newsletters<\/a>!<\/p>\n

Negotiations between Republicans and Democrats started to distill days before the election and the deal to end the federal shutdown, creating \u201cno correlation,\u201d Pittman added.<\/p>\n

Now that lawmakers came to a deal, they\u2019re already looking ahead to next year\u2019s budget discussions.<\/p>\n

Republicans voted for a much higher number than they would\u2019ve liked, though Pittman said that\u2019s because they were able to find $3 billion in the \u201ccouch cushions\u00a0of bureaucracy.\u201d He\u2019s already promised to be more aggressive with appropriated funds next year.<\/p>\n

Democratic House Appropriations Chair Rep. Jordan Harris said there\u2019s no couch cushions, just good budget management.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve always estimated conservatively, which is why every budget for the last few years, there\u2019s been money left on our balance sheet,\u201d Harris said. \u201cThat\u2019s why we have a robust rainy day fund coming out of the Wolf years and going into the Shapiro years.\u201d<\/p>\n

But this year\u2019s budget allocates more dollars than the state plans to make back. So, where will lawmakers look for cash next?<\/p>\n

Watch This Week in Pennsylvania on the video player above to find out.<\/p>\n

PLUS! Watch extended interviews with Pittman and Harris below:<\/p>\n

Every week, This Week in Pennsylvania gives a comprehensive look at the week\u2019s biggest news events in Pennsylvania, provided by the abc27 News team, along with the latest updates on local stories.<\/p>\n

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Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC27. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) \u2014 Two months into Pennsylvania\u2019s budget stalemate, Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R) said his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42629,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[25534,7095,5928,23777,28,30,29,25533],"class_list":["post-42628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-couch-cushions","tag-federal-shutdown","tag-joe-pittman","tag-jordan-harris","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-senate-majority-leader"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42628","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=42628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}