Treasurer: Pa. may run out of money

— and a projected $700 million deficit in the one that began July 1.

The treasurer’s office predicts that without a revenue package, the general fund — the state’s main bank account — would need to borrow as much as $3 billion this fiscal year.

Money in the general fund regularly ebbs and flows throughout the year, and the Treasury typically provides short-term loans to cover the state when its account is short. But in recent years, Mr. Torsella said, the loan amounts have increased and covered longer periods.

“What was a cold that you could take an aspirin for is now an eight-month chronic illness,” he said.

Mr. Torsella said Treasury would still be willing to do some short-term lending, but “I’ve said we don’t have the ability to do it to this degree, and I can’t responsibly be OK with going to the private market if there’s no revenue to sort of base that on.”

Mr. Miskin, the House GOP spokesman, said the treasurer’s “publicity interviews” aren’t “changing how legislative leaders are thinking about it.”

“Everyone gets it,” he said.

He contended the state was facing a $1.5 billion shortfall in last fiscal year’s budget “because the administration and the treasurer kept spending money we didn’t have.”

He said that instead of allowing the spending plan to lapse into law absent a revenue package to pay for it, Mr. Wolf should have struck spending lines from it to bring it into balance — a process known in Harrisburg as “blue-lining.”

“Ultimately, it is the governor’s responsibility to sign the budget or blue-line it,” Mr. Miskin said. “Since that didn’t happen, now he has to decide whether he can fund things. He should be putting money in budgetary reserves — but that requires making a decision.”