Pittsburgh, December 3, 2014 – State Sen. Wayne D. Fontana (D-Allegheny) issued the following statement after Corbett Administration officials today admitted that the state faces a nearly $ 2 billion budget shortfall:
“Budgets are about choices and priorities. Pennsylvania’s impending budget crisis is a result of bad choices and misguided priorities by the governor and majority Republicans. Instead of working cooperatively with Democrats last summer to pass a responsible and honest state budget, they used their majorities to ram through a ‘smoke and mirrors’ spending plan that is collapsing before our very eyes. Democrats were not invited to be part of the budget process. It was election year politicking at its worst.
“As I have said many times over the past four years, the Corbett Administration places far too little emphasis on creating jobs and helping people get the training and education they need. As a result, our state is now last in job creation. We continue to herd young people on dead end career paths while ignoring the business community’s plea to train Pennsylvania workers for good available jobs.
“People are tired of political posturing, false promises, phony logic and numbers that don’t add up. We can no longer afford the kind of partisanship and gamesmanship that has hampered our ability to tackle real problems and hammer out lasting solutions.
“I am confident the incoming Wolf Administration will invite a spirit of cooperativeness in solving our budget problems that we have not seen in the last few years, and one where everyone has a seat at the table, regardless of political party.
“It’s time to get to work.”
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