Stopgap spending bill would be a mistake
As Pennsylvania’s budget stalemate drags on, school districts and social service providers are struggling to scrape by: securing bank loans, drawing on lines of credit, emptying reserves and delaying payments to vendors.
Republicans in the Legislature hope to pass some kind of stopgap spending bill to offer them relief, but Gov. Tom Wolf is digging in his heels. It’s not likely he’ll go along with any stopgap bill unless “we have a general agreement on what the budget looks like and it’s going to take some time to actually get the details in place,” Wolf told Pittsburgh radio station KDKA-AM.
Although we sympathize with the plight of our school districts and other agencies that need state funds so badly, we think Wolf is right in continuing what he calls “a good fight.”
Probably the last thing Pennsylvania needs is to emulate the U.S. Congress, which has become through its partisan bickering nearly dysfunctional. “Stopgap” is about all that Congress can accomplish these days. We have stopgap bills to keep the government running rather than to craft budgets through compromise. We have a stopgap measure to keep money flowing to Homeland Security. And in July, Congress approved its 34th stopgap bill to continue funding for highways. For six years, Congress has failed to come up with a long-term plan for highway funding!
Who knows? If Pennsylvania passed one stopgap bill to keep money flowing, what’s to prevent the next? Would we ever see a budget again?
If a swimming pool is leaking, it’s necessary to fix the leak, not to keep adding water.
It is the constitutional requirement of Pennsylvania’s government to produce an annual budget. The governor and Legislature are in violation of the law because no budget has been adopted. Passing a budget is their job, and as painful as the impasse is, stopgap spending only allows the lawbreaking to continue.