PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Gov. Tom Wolf used his final budget address to highlight his time in office, chart out goals for the remainder of his term — and to call out what he characterized as political obstruction across the aisle.
Wolf pointed to successes of the past seven years, including a reduction in prison populations, a lower number of people who are uninsured, pension reform, and a smaller carbon footprint.
He continued his call for an increase in the state’s minimum wage.
“When more Pennsylvanians get paid fairly, reliance on public benefits goes down,” he said.
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Wolf said there should be better support for families trying to afford college, and a commitment to the Fair Funding Formula to equitably fund all schools across Pennsylvania.
“The truth is, the longer we go without paying this bill, the more it will wind up costing us,” he said. “It just means we wind up spending more on social services, remedial programs, even prisons. And that calculation doesn’t even take into account the opportunity costs of failing to invest in our kids."
Most importantly, the governor says, there is a budget surplus — including a rainy day fund of $2.8 billion — which he wants the General Assembly to dip into for investments in job training, small businesses, clean energy, infrastructure and health care.
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Wolf got philosophical as he called out Republicans for favoring obstruction over discussion and compromise. Partisanship is part of the job, he said, but so is arguing and even agreeing.
“Without it, we become irrevocably fragmented, a nation where we have no responsibility to work alongside our neighbor, just an incentive to gain and wield power at any cost,” he said.
“When we walk away from the very idea of democratic governance, we wind up somewhere we can’t come back from. We lose the only mechanism we have for resolving our disagreements fairly, or even peacefully.”
Republicans say Wolf’s plan was “developed in a fiscal fantasy land where concern for future fiscal years apparently doesn’t exist.” They say it increases spending by $4.5 billion and will result in higher taxes and energy costs.
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