Rendell takes budget battle to the Internet
HARRISBURG - The state budget battle is now being waged on YouTube. Yesterday morning, Gov. Rendell began airing ads about Pennsylvania's budget crisis on the Web sites of 10 newspapers, from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. The YouTube video features a somber-looking Rendell explaining why his proposal to raise the state's personal income tax is necessary - and why an alternative budget plan being pushed by Republicans in the Senate contains, in his view, catastrophic spending cuts.
HARRISBURG - The state budget battle is now being waged on YouTube.
Yesterday morning, Gov. Rendell began airing ads about Pennsylvania's budget crisis on the Web sites of 10 newspapers, from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. The YouTube video features a somber-looking Rendell explaining why his proposal to raise the state's personal income tax is necessary - and why an alternative budget plan being pushed by Republicans in the Senate contains, in his view, catastrophic spending cuts.
The cost to run the spots every day for the next week: $15,000, which the governor is charging to his campaign account, Rendell for Governor, flush with almost $1.9 million as of late last year.
"The governor believes that educating the public is in everyone's interest and he is willing to bear some of the cost of doing so," Rendell spokesman Chuck Ardo said yesterday when asked why the governor was turning to the Internet to get his message out.
Rendell is not the only one.
In the public relations war that passage of a state budget has become this year, both sides are moving beyond conventional tactics to air their points of view and win public support as the impasse drags on.
And the situation is bad and getting worse: the state is two weeks past the July 1 deadline to enact a spending plan for 2009-10. And just yesterday, House Democrats tossed another wrench into the standoff by proposing to yank funding for higher education from the general fund in order free up $1.2 billion. (The Democrats did not say how they would make up for that higher education funding.)
Given the stakes, the spin volume in Harrisburg is being turned up to full blast.
House Republicans, for instance, recently produced two YouTube spots featuring a character named "Joe the Taxpayer" who mocks Rendell's insistence on raising taxes on hard-working Pennsylvanians.
Steve Miskin, spokesman for House Minority Leader Sam Smith (R., Jefferson), said the caucus did not pay to run the clips on any Web sites. Instead, links for the videos were sent to reporters and were posted on a number of blogs.
But unlike the moments of levity in the Republican spots, Rendell's 21/2-minute ad strikes a gloomier tone.
The governor starts off reprising the state's fiscal woes, and arguing that steep cuts to state programs alone cannot solve the problem.
Although he doesn't ever mention Republicans, he takes indirect aim at the cuts contained in the Senate GOP's $27.3 billion budget plan, which he predicts would result in "debilitating cuts" to everything from state police trooper ranks to early-childhood education programs.
Rendell, who has proposed an almost $29 billion budget, then makes an appeal for his plan to raise the income tax rate by 16 percent - from 3.07 percent to 3.57 percent - for three years.
"Today I'm calling on legislators to demonstrate the political courage to put the next generation before the next election," Rendell says, looking straight into the camera.
He continues: "If at the state level we don't raise your taxes, we might escape your wrath temporarily, but you would simply wind up paying more and putting an impossible burden on your schools. That would be the coward's way out. It would just be old-fashioned buck-passing."
The ads will run on the Web sites of most of the state's newspapers, including the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Allentown Morning Call, and Philly.com, Democratic officials said yesterday.
Although it is unusual to tap campaign funds for government-related announcements, Ardo said yesterday that Rendell, who is in his last term, did so because "this is very much a campaign for Pennsylvania's future."
Erik Arneson, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R., Delaware), said his caucus isn't partaking in the YouTube wars.
He and others pointed out that the administration spent the last several months mobilizing its vast public relations apparatus to demonize - unsuccessfully, in his opinion - the Senate Republican budget plan.
"If the governor wants to throw away campaign dollars on the same misguided effort, that is his prerogative," Arneson said.
Budget Videos
To view Rendell's YouTube ad, go to: http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=4PIykBYx1Y4
To see the House GOP's YouTube spots, go to:
watch?v=zUCfJm3zpm0
and
watch?v=sjR5E28RdWQ EndText