(The Center Square) – One budget, two narratives.<\/p>\n
As Gov. Josh Shapiro spent his holiday weekend touting the policy wins baked into the long overdue state budget, his critics have been crunching numbers.<\/p>\n
Among the successes Shapiro talked up over the holiday weekend are investments in education, workforce development, orphan well plugging, health care, and more.<\/p>\n
Together, the investments add up to $50.9 billion. It\u2019s an increase of 4.7% from the previous year but still short of the governor\u2019s $51.4 billion proposal.<\/p>\n
Conservative groups like the Commonwealth Foundation say that the cost of the new budget is too high without a solution to meet the structural deficit. Even after final negotiations met Republicans\u2019 demands to leave the state\u2019s more than $7 billion dollar emergency savings account untouched, overspending remains a top concern.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout meaningful structural reform, the state\u2019s deficit will continue to worsen, and the fiscal security of the state will hang in the balance,\u201d wrote the foundation. \u201cThanks to Shapiro\u2019s overspending, it will be the households already stretching every dollar who will foot the bill.\u201d<\/p>\n
The organization says that spending in this year\u2019s budget amounts to $9,568 in spending per household. The figure does not represent how much households themselves contribute to the budget, and there have been no state tax increases this year.<\/p>\n
What is the state buying for the sum of nearly $10,000 per household? The lion\u2019s share goes toward Education and Human Services.<\/p>\n
As for education, the legislature has been tasked with remedying what the state Supreme Court determined to be an unconstitutionally inequitable public school system. The department\u2019s $19 billion appropriation, critics say, won\u2019t be sufficient to resolve its shortcomings. The new budget works to bring some money back to schools with cyber charter reform, while promoting structured literacy to improve student outcomes.<\/p>\n
Human Services oversees Medicaid spending, which the foundation says is \u201cexpanding far quicker than Pennsylvanian\u2019s ability to pay for it.\u201d Currently, about 3 million people in the state are covered by the program, which amounts to nearly a quarter of the population. It includes 39% of children and 13% of seniors.<\/p>\n
Industry advocates have said that some of the spending is too low. On Sunday, Shapiro posted to Facebook about a $21 million for home care, \u201cI promised to have our direct care workers\u2019 back, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re delivering.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania Homecare Association called the budget<\/a> \u201ca devastating failure of leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n Transit advocates lamented that the new budget didn\u2019t include a long-term funding source for SEPTA, Pittsburgh Regional Transit, and public transit across the state\u2019s 67 counties. The state has already shelled out $220 million<\/a> in unplanned spending to support SEPTA in the less than three weeks since the budget passed.<\/p>\n