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| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |
| State Rep. Gary Haluska |
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Republican budget ignores surplus while slashing
schools, universities, health care and jobs
HARRISBURG, June 29 – State Rep. Gary Haluska today said he will vote against a final state spending plan for 2011-12 developed by Gov. Tom Corbett and Republican legislators that would cost the state thousands of jobs, increase taxes for millions of homeowners, harm seniors and the disabled, and turn back the clock on education in Pennsylvania.
All this, Haluska said, while Republicans sit on a revenue surplus that is likely to be as much as $700 million when the new fiscal year begins on Friday.
"The refusal by Republicans to use even a portion of that surplus to reduce cuts to education, help senior citizens, kids and low-income families, and ensure that many middle-class families in Pennsylvania won't lose the ability to send their kids to college, is unnecessarily harsh," Haluska said. "And making these cuts without regard to how they will impact jobs and family budgets in an economy that in still stalled is just plain wrong.
"The Republican budget is all about an ideology that comes from party leaders in Washington, not about reality here in Pennsylvania," he said. "The Republicans began the year giving huge corporations and big oil and natural gas companies a tax break while their budget forces working, middle-class families to pay higher taxes and tuition, health care, child care and other costs."
Haluska said the Republicans are stashing away as much $700 million in taxes already paid by Pennsylvania residents while cutting more than $1.2 billion in basic and higher education funding and half a billion dollars from health care and other services for senior citizens, the disabled, cancer and other patients, women and children, and veterans.
"These cuts will force school districts and local governments to increase taxes," he said. "Calling this a no-tax budget is not accurate. Most families and senior citizens in Pennsylvania will see their overall tax bill go up – many by hundreds of dollars. Their dwindling bank account isn't going to make a distinction between a state tax bill and a local property tax bill. Raising taxes is raising taxes, and that's what this budget does."
While taxes will be going up, available jobs -- and access to education and training for those jobs -- will be going down, Haluska said. The budget cuts will result in more than 11,000 teachers and additional school staff across the state losing their jobs. The budget also slashes funding for community colleges, State-System and state-related universities in Pennsylvania by $200 million.
"In many counties, colleges and universities are one of the biggest employers, and generate a lot of related technology and research business and jobs," he said. "The budget also cuts funding for hospitals, another huge local employer throughout Pennsylvania, and a variety of economic development and job-training programs."
Haluska said the one big business getting a free pass in the budget is the Marcellus Shale drillers. They aren't being asked to provide any share of the huge revenues they are taking out of Pennsylvania, even though a recent report shows the new jobs they've created in Pennsylvania are about 60,000 fewer than the governor has claimed.
"This budget protects the huge corporations that are in the best position to sacrifice while asking middle- and low-income families, women, children, seniors, veterans, college students, the disabled and others who are in the worst position to sacrifice to bear the entire burden of these drastic cuts."
Haluska said more details about how the Republican state budget will impact Pennsylvania families and seniors can be viewed at www.pahouse.com. Information on the cuts that local school districts and their taxpayers will have to absorb because of the cuts in the Republican state budget is available at Haluska's website at www.pahouse.com/Haluska.
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