Pennsylvania enacted a $33.997 billion budget on June 28, 2019. And for the second year in a row, the budget was in place by the June deadline. This year, unlike his first few years in office, Governor Wolf did not seek major spending initiatives and ask for new broad-based revenues. And that made it easier to reach agreement with the Republican-controlled General Assembly. Indeed, it was the members of his own Democratic Party who expressed the most dissatisfaction with the final budget, largely because it did not include the increase in the minimum wage he requested and eliminated the General Assistance program he proposed to fund after it was restored by the Courts last year.
We share the disappointment about these two parts of the budget and also regret that the state’s current politics doesn’t allow our government to address the deep and persistent public investment deficit to which we have been pointing for a number of years.
Read the full analysis of the 2019-2020 Pennsylvania state budget (download a PDF here):