“Yesterday, Governor Tom Wolf unveiled yet another series of proposed tax hikes on Pennsylvanians. With the budget for the current fiscal year still incomplete, Tom Wolf announced a plan to take $3.6 billion out of the budgets of middle-class Pennsylvania families. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Tom Wolf delivered a budget address that focused more on widening the partisan divide than bringing us together. Pennsylvanians deserve a leader; not someone who’s stuck in a perpetual campaign.” — PA GOP Communications Director Megan Sweeney
“At one point in his prepared budget proposal, referring to the state’s $2 billion projected deficit, Gov. Tom Wolf used a variation of the old “if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging” cliché. Actually, that cliché is a good metaphor for the governor’s budget address itself. He’s in a political hole with the majority Republican Legislature. But he keeps digging.”
“Starting with the gridlock he left off with last year, Gov. Tom Wolf this morning unveiled a $33.3 billion proposed budget for 2016-17 — one that again seeks higher taxes on workers, smokers, natural gas drillers and others, plus new taxes on some consumer purchases, such as a 6 percent tax on cable television and movie tickets. In the opening remarks of his speech, Wolf did not try to hide from the gridlock that has consumed the Capitol and led to growing disdain among voters. ‘This will not be an ordinary governor’s budget address,’ Wolf said. ‘Usually, this speech is an opportunity to lay out an ambitious agenda for the year ahead. But I can’t give that speech. Not under these circumstances.’ Then he might have made the gridlock worse.”
“Gov. Tom Wolf, still trying to get a state budget completed for the current fiscal year, unveiled a 2016-17 spending plan Tuesday that looks, at least on the surface, an awful lot like his first budget proposal.”
“Taxpayers that pay. Wolf’s proposal calls for a nearly 11 percent increase to the personal income tax, lifting it from 3.07 percent to 3.4 percent effective Jan. 1. If that sends chills through the heart of many Pennsylvanians, it’s not nearly as big as the 20 percent increase Wolf called for in his budget address last year.”
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