Senate eyes House budget plan that’s short of what it wanted

HARRISBURG » Pennsylvania’s Republican-controlled Legislature on Monday began what could be a long week as lawmakers worked again to try to end a fourmonth budget standoff with big borrowing and gambling expansion packages to backfill a projected $2.2 billion deficit.

The Senate appeared ready to submit to a House budget-balancing plan that fell well short of what Senate leaders and Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf had sought.

The House plan, passed last week, contains a grab bag of tax increases that is projected to yield as much as $140 million in a full year but perhaps as little as $60 million. That is a small fraction of the $500 millionplus tax package the Senate had passed in July in an effort to help wipe out Pennsylvania’s entrenched postrecession deficit.

Pressing the House for more concessions likely would extend the budget standoff, rather than ending it this week, said Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, R-Centre.

“We’re not thrilled with it, but it’s like everything else, you’ve got to look at it in its totality,” Corman said Monday. “And it isn’t how we would have done it, obviously, but it’s what they can get 102 votes for and ... that’s got to be respected and understood.”

The House’s budget bill is built around borrowing $1.5 billion against Pennsylvania’s share of a 1998 multistate tobacco settlement. With interest, payback likely would cost more than $2 billion over 20 years. The Senate had earlier approved a slightly smaller borrowing package, $1.25 billion.

A vote on the bill could happen as early as Wednesday, and it leaves the question about whether state government will have to confront another substantial deficit in the 2018 election year.