According to the Patriot News,Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi thinks the budget mess could last well into August.
"I really don't think that we're anywhere near close," said Pileggi, R-Delaware County. "It has potential to go into August easily."
Earlier, Rendell said he thought a budget agreement was one to two weeks away, given how far apart the sides are. He is meeting with legislative leaders again later this afternoon undertaking what both sides have considered a useful exercise in going through the Senate Republican and Rendell's budget proposals line by line to see where the differences lie.
Senate Republicans held an afternoon news conference that drew all but two GOP senators, who could not be in attendance, to show their united front on passing a state budget that spends less than this year's budget and includes no broad-based tax increase.
Maybe it's just me, but, instead of holding a press conference to show Pennsylvania the GOP Senate has a "united front," wouldn't it be a better use of time and resources to start negotiating a budget compromise?
The bottom line; this isn't solely the Republicans fault, nor is it solely the Democrats fault. The budget delay is the responsibility of every single PA politician who works in Harrisburg, no matter their party affiliation. Instead of using the media to manipulate the public's perception of the budget debate over the last few months, both parties should've buckled down and started working on a compromise. Yet, here we are on July 2nd (two days after PA needed a budget) and, instead of actually working on the budget, we have politicians arguing over how late the budget will end up being.
Great...
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