NationwideHave YOU Had Enough Yet?
Please, people, when I send a message in the fall asking you to get organized to take back the state Senate next year from the irresponsible cranks that run it now, please, please, please say "Yes!"
This is just some of what the Republican-controlled PA Senate passed as a budget proposal:
Cuts:
- $14.5 million: The entire budget for the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, which funds more than 1,000 cultural groups around the state each year
- $344,000: The entire budget of the Office of Safe Schools
- $11 million: The entire budget for the DEP's Safe Water program
-$11.4 million: The entire budget for state-funded Public Television.
Funding for 10,000 low-income children's state-subsidized health insurance.
Getting more:
- $161 million: Increase to the Department of Corrections, which would receive more than $1.7 billion
- $176 million: Increase to the Department of Aging and Long Term Living, which would receive $1.2 billion (OK, I'm cool with that)
Note, though, that the increase in prison funding is over 4 times the savings from the cutting of those many very worthwhile programs. But with privatized prisons there are a lot more tranfers of tax dollars to corporate bottom-lines to be made and thanks to the continuing "War on The Disenfranchised Drugs" we have a lot more mouths to feed.
So now the House will have to negotiate the cuts back up and the new expenditures down, but once again, we'll have an extended budget battle and threats to shutdown the government and important services and we'll still be fighting for scraps.
Had enough yet?
Recycled Electrons
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