Pa. House tees up first budget bill, with Democrats using a new approach to push more education funding

HARRISBURG — Budget season is underway in the General Assembly, and Democrats in the state House are already pushing the envelope with their one-seat majority.

House Democrats passed an almost $46 billion spending plan with a 102-101 vote on Monday that tacked on more than $1.4 billion to Gov. Josh Shapiro’s original budget proposal.

The major area where Democrats increased spending is K-12 education, including more than $375 million for basic and special education in the state. It would also restart the Level Up program that increases funding for the state’s 100 poorest school districts.

Some education advocates had hoped Shapiro would be more ambitious in his first budget proposal, like his predecessor, former Gov. Tom Wolf.

After higher-than-expected revenues, House Democrats said there was room to increase education spending. House Appropriations Chair Jordan Harris (D., Philadelphia) said the state’s $800 million in unexpected revenue showed Pennsylvania could make more strategic investments, including a number of Republican requests.

“Today, I say to my Republican colleagues, in the words of the great Shawn Carter [Jay-Z], ‘Show Me What You Got,’” Harris said on the House floor during debate, referencing the 2006 hit song. “House Democrats showed you what we got. We showed you what we believe in, we showed you what we think is important. We showed you what we think we should be investing in.”

Minority Appropriations Chair Seth Grove (R., York) argued the extra revenue comes from interest on the state’s savings — and that the proposed increases would draw down the state’s coffers much more quickly. The state’s spending is projected to outpace revenue starting in the 2023-24 budget year, with the gap continuing to grow after that, according to the state’s Independent Fiscal Office.

Shapiro commended the House Democrats’ spending proposal “for taking this important step forward and adding to our shared priorities as we work to pass a commonsense budget,” said Manuel Bonder, Shapiro’s press secretary, in a statement.

House Democrats didn’t unveil their spending proposal until Monday afternoon, and sent it to the Senate by 7 p.m. Many Republicans called it a “sneak attack” and complained that they did not get enough time to look at it before they started debating it Monday evening.

Democrats broke from recent tradition by putting forward their own spending plan as part of early budget talks. Lawmakers will usually use placeholder numbers — the numbers from the previous year’s enacted budget — to start the budget process. Instead, Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee this year used Shapiro’s budget proposal as the placeholder and then amended in their own increased spending on Monday.

By starting the budget process with their own spending plan, Democrats have potentially put Senate Republicans in therole of the “bad guy” as they vote on cuts.

And the strategy already looked like it started to work.

House Minority Leader Bryan Cutler (R., Lancaster) said in a press conference on Monday that the House Democrats’ spending proposal made Shapiro’s budget “suddenly look very reasonable.”

“The House Democrats promised us their ‘humble majority’ would lead to a new day in Pennsylvania,” Cutler said, referencing a common phrase from the House Democrats’ Leader Matt Bradford (D., Montgomery). “But the one-seat majority clearly looks like it allows them to work in the shadows, and more importantly, would take us to bankrupting Pennsylvania.”

But Bradford was reluctant to talk about this new approach.

“A lot of Republicans came forward and said they wanted to see more money for their schools, they wanted more money in their Rainy Day fund, and we showed them what that looks like. And we showed that House Democrats can pass that,” Bradford told The Inquirer after the vote.

Pennsylvania’s budget negotiations traditionally happen behind closed doors. Leaders from the House and Senate and their staffs meet with the Governor’s Office to negotiate a deal. It’s unusual for the public to see any updated spending plans until late June, once a budget agreement is made.

And these numbers are nowhere near complete. Republicans in the GOP-controlled state Senate and House Democrats will need to find an agreement that Shapiro is willing to sign.

Bradford told The Inquirer that leaders are in “preliminary” conversations about the budget with the Senate and Shapiro’s office. They have not started debating any of the policy issues, but Bradford said he expects at least two sticking points: raising the minimum wage and creating a statute of limitations for survivors of childhood sexual abuse, both of which are Democratic priorities.

“There are those who want to use victims of sexual abuse as political leverage, and that’s a non-starter,” Bradford said.