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JPZenger

(6,819 posts)
Thu Jun 5, 2014, 10:59 AM Jun 2014

Leaked Repub memo shows what will be slashed in PA. budget to make up billion $ deficit

Last edited Thu Jun 5, 2014, 12:44 PM - Edit history (1)

http://www.mcall.com/news/nationworld/pennsylvania/mc-pa-corbett-budget-fix-ideas-0604-20140604,0,7502586.story

The Repubs are still refusing to pass a natural gas extraction tax or a tax on cigars and smokeless tobacco. PA. is the only state with a natural gas industry without an extraction tax, and the only state that does not tax cigars or chewing tobacco. A fourth major round of business tax cuts would still be proposed.

Dems also point out that tens of millions of state dollars could be saved if the Repubs would just accept Federal funds to expand Medical Assistance. Instead, Corbett has placed too many conditions on accepting the federal money, and a whole year of federal funding for hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians has already been lost.

Excerpt of Article:

"To try find more money, the House GOP document, under the header "Proposals Presented by the Governor," recommends:

•Five percent cuts in all state departments — with the exception of reductions to basic education, special education, preschools, state-funded universities and the state's college loan program.

•Taking $227 million in excess money from six grant and loan programs designed to help volunteer fire companies, local law enforcement and businesses.

•Saving $31 million by eliminating or reducing four tax credit programs that promote employment, historical preservation, help seniors find home-care and help families attend private or parochial schools. Most of the tax credit changes would come from a $20 million reduction in the $50 million Education Improvement Tax Credit businesses can get for donating to private and nonprofit educational institutions.

Transferring $136 million to the general fund budget from special funds used for parks, agriculture preservation and the horse-racing industry. Part of that transfer includes $65 million from the Keystone Recreation Park & Conservation Fund, created in 1993 by voter referendum to direct 15 percent of realty transfer tax to local governments, land trust organizations and state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources for recreation and conservation."



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Leaked Repub memo shows what will be slashed in PA. budget to make up billion $ deficit (Original Post) JPZenger Jun 2014 OP
I am rather surprised Curmudgeoness Jun 2014 #1
Yearly fracking severance taxes: TX-2.7 Billion;N.Dak. $1.9 bil.;PA.$204 Million Divernan Jun 2014 #2

Curmudgeoness

(18,219 posts)
1. I am rather surprised
Thu Jun 5, 2014, 07:27 PM
Jun 2014

at the cutting of tax credit programs to help with private and parochial school attendance. That seems to go against all that the GOP is pushing lately....supporting private schools to kill the public school system. I am not opposed to that part being cut.

It is a long way from here to approval of a budget though.

Divernan

(15,480 posts)
2. Yearly fracking severance taxes: TX-2.7 Billion;N.Dak. $1.9 bil.;PA.$204 Million
Thu Jun 5, 2014, 08:20 PM
Jun 2014

The IDIOT GOP neanderthals are STILL not pushing Corbett for serverance/extraction taxes on fracking comparable to all other major fracking states. According to the article the projected state deficit is currently $532.5 million deficit and expected to grow to $1.3 billion or more by June 30, 2015.

The numbers from a Pew Charitable Trust research study are for 2011. So that makes

THREE years that Pennsylvania has foregone approximately $6 billion dollars in tax revenue from

those blood-sucking, environment destroying frackers
.
http://www.pewstates.org/projects/stateline/headlines/fracking-for-state-dollars-85899447047

But states collect vastly different amounts of severance tax revenue on oil and gas. North Dakota, for example, imposes an 11.5 percent severance on oil, subject to certain exemptions, and collected nearly $1.9 billion in all severance taxes in 2011, up from just $83,000 in the pre-fracking days of the 1990s.

Pennsylvania has no severance tax at all. Instead it has an impact fee that helps localities fix roads and other drilling damage. The impact fee brought in $204 million in 2011, but that was only about half of what the state could have collected had it used a tax comparable to that of neighboring West Virginia, by one estimate.


Pennsylvania is the only state with substantial oil and gas reserves that does not have a severance tax. Even tax-averse Texas has one: It levies 7.5 percent on natural gas and 4.6 percent on oil, which helped to bring in $2.7 billion in combined severance taxes for the state in 2011.


I'm sending the Pew article with my comments to my state rep & senator tomorrow. I urge you to do the same.
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