More gambling in Pa.? You can bet on it

Now we know the Pennsylvania budget impasse is getting serious. Hey, it’s only four months overdue. What’s the rush?

Some Republican legislators are looking to an old panacea to fix the state’s fiscal woes

— legalized gambling.

Now, our esteemed legislators might be ready to “roll the dice” in an effort to break the logjam and attack a deficit that continues to rise faster than the Susquehanna in the capital.

Yes, some Republican legislators are looking to an old panacea to fix the state’s fiscal woes – at least temporarily. Legalized gambling. House Majority Leader David Reed, R-Indiana, floated the idea earlier this week as an alternative to hiking taxes, which most GOP types in Harrisburg think is strictly a losing bet. They’re not nearly as leery about a game of roulette, betting that gamblers can once again bail out Pennsylvania.

For more than 100 days now, the sides in Harrisburg have been drawn. New Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf first proposed hiking both the sales and income taxes, as well as enacting a new severance tax on natural gas drilling in the state to eradicate huge education cuts that fell during the four-year term of his predecessor, Tom Corbett, and also to increase revenue to attack the state’s mounting deficit.

Republicans declared the tax hikes – in particular the increases in the sales and income levies – dead on arrival shortly after Wolf rolled them out in his initial budget pitch in the spring.

They instead wanted to talk about the revenue possibilities available by privatizing the sale of liquor in the state, and by reforming the state’s two huge – and debtridden – public employee pension plans.

That’s pretty much where the two sides have been ever since, the July 1 deadline for having a new spending plan in place not withstanding.

Wolf at least gave the impression of blinking, mouthing some flexibility on liquor sales as well as pension reform.

The governor vetoed both an initial no-tax-hike Republican spending plan, as well as a stopgap measure that would have delivered some muchneeded revenue to schools and non-profits that are being hard-pressed by this calamitous Capital caper.

GOP leaders in the Legislature decided to call his bluff. They put his tax plan out for a vote in the full House, confident he did not have the votes to get them passed in the Republican dominated House and Senate. They were right.

Wolf not only lost to a solid Republican wall, he even saw a handful of Democrats turn their backs on his tax-hike plan, even after he dropped his push to increase the state sales tax.

But his call for a 16 percent hike in the income tax, as well as a 3.5 percent tax on natural gas, got the cold shoulder.

Delco state Rep. Bill Adolph, R-165, the powerful majority leader of the House Appropriations Committee, derided the governor’s taxhike plans, saying “95 percent of the governor’s latest tax proposal will be paid by the working men and women of Pennsylvania. It’s that simple.”

Not nearly as simple is where the budget talks go now.

This week Wolf said he is not ready to “cave” on his taxhike plans.

After the stinging budget vote rebuke, the word most heard in the halls of Harrisburg was “reality.”

Now Republicans are floating the notion of increasing legalized gaming. Really? Bet on it. What is really needed in Harrisburg is the ability – and even more so the desire – to lead. To make difficult decisions, yes, including at times considering increases in taxes.

We’re not going to hold our breath.

You can bet on that.

What is really needed in Harrisburg is the ability – and even more so the desire – to lead.