Letters: GOP's offer a load of manure
THERE'S THE STORY about the farmer who finds a boy in his pasture digging furiously into a huge pile of horse manure.
THERE'S THE STORY about the farmer who finds a boy in his pasture digging furiously into a huge pile of horse manure.
"What in tarnation are you doing?" the farmer asks.
"With all this manure I figure there's gotta be a pony under there somewhere," the boy answers.
I wish I could find the pony under all the manure emanating from Republicans' "one-time offer" Wednesday on the state budget.
Initial reports sounded promising: The GOP leadership in the House and Senate offered $300 million more in basic education funding in return for diverting future state workers and public school employees to 401(k)-style retirement benefits.
But the offer proves to be more ultimatum than negotiation - all manure, no pony.
Education
* Republicans still want to shortchange school districts by $87 million in Social Security payments in the current fiscal year.
* Saying they're not interested in a counterproposal, GOP negotiators offered zilch to restore funding for higher education, special education and pre-K programs.
* No details from the Republicans on how to pay for education funding, other than saying "liquor privatization must also be agreed to."
* Not one GOP mention of providing property and wage tax relief to struggling homeowners.
Household incomes
* GOP leaders ignored Gov. Tom Wolf's compromise offer on a hybrid public pension system that limits traditional defined-benefit pensions for future hires and provides 80 percent of the savings touted in the Senate GOP's original pension legislation.
* The regurgitated Republican plan would not substantially reduce taxpayer pension costs.
* The GOP did offer to slightly increase employer contributions to pension accounts, but this is weak feed when you consider the original GOP pension plan would eviscerate future pensions by as much as 70 percent.
* The Republican mantra of making deep cuts in future benefits would likely require offsetting increases in wages for the state to attract competent, committed employees.
Government that works
* The Republican "offer" doesn't move us toward a balanced budget that fixes the billion-dollar-plus structural deficit.
* With no indications that they will bend on adopting a severance tax on big oil and gas producers, the GOP budget plan would condemn the commonwealth to more one-time revenue gimmicks.
* The Republican intransigence maintains $27.9 million in cuts to county programs from the previous administration, reducing services and increasing pressure on local taxpayers.
It's been 14 years since political activist Grover Norquist said he wanted to reduce government "to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."
It's been a little over 50 days since Pennsylvania's budget was due.
The bathtub is rapidly filling up as our schools and human service providers sink deeper in the morass and manure.
Perhaps a thoroughbred aptly named "Genuine Compromise" will emerge in the budget sweepstakes. Pennsylvania needs such a seeming longshot to come in because it's had its fill of plodders and pretenders.
