HARRISBURG - Gov. Ed Rendell said Thursday that legislative leaders should be working harder to negotiate a spending plan by the end of the month and repeated his position that declining revenues this year have made tax increases a necessary evil.
The governor's Capitol news conference was his third budget-related public event in as many days. He defended his proposed 16 percent increase in the personal income tax and said the $2 billion in cuts he has identified are real, even if the bottom-line number has barely budged.
Rendell said he would consider signing a stopgap budget bill that would prevent state employees from having to work without being paid until a budget passes.
Pennsylvania is facing a projected $3.2 billion revenue shortfall for the current year, and Rendell is proposing a mix of spending cuts and tax increases to avert it.
"We have to have increased revenues," said Rendell, who this year has floated higher taxes - or new taxes - on health-insurance premiums, retail sales, tobacco, natural gas extraction and video poker. "When you look at the numbers, the numbers drive the discussion."
Rendell said no lawmakers who voted for the last state income tax increase, in 2003, lost re-election the following year. This year, he said, the decline in tax revenues and other factors have left them little choice, he said.
"I know that recommending a tax increase is not going to do much for my popularity," said Rendell, who is barred by the state constitution from seeking a third consecutive term.
Legislative Republicans have said they oppose any tax increases and want the 2009-10 budget to be balanced by reducing expenditures.
Rendell said he has adapted his plan with additional cuts based on his review of the no-new-taxes budget bill that passed the Republican-controlled Senate on a party-line vote before House Democrats killed it.
House GOP spokesman Steve Miskin said Rendell's cuts are more like accounting shifts, because his proposed level of total spending has remained static at about $29 billion.
"The governor has not cut a single dime, a single penny, out of his budget," Miskin said.