From the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center (http://www.pennbpc.org):
In Pennsylvania, rumors began to swirl late last week about a potential deal to end the 2017-18 state budget impasse, which has continued for three months without a revenue plan to fund the budget passed by the General Assembly at the beginning of July. Unfortunately, the rumors we’ve heard suggest that mainstream Republicans in the Senate and the House are ready to concede to the extremists whose irresponsible “no-new-revenue” scheme resulted in last week’s costly credit downgrade by Standard and Poors. Instead of requiring shale gas drillers to start paying their fair share like they do in every other major natural gas-producing state, they appear willing to accept a budget deal with little or no recurring revenues. We hope the rumors are false because a budget based on raiding special funds and raising one-year revenues from gaming expansion would be very bad for Pennsylvania, virtually guaranteeing another budget deficit next year. It is imperative that the effort to create a bi-partisan budget agreement that includes a fair and reasonable tax on gas drillers.
*** TAKE ACTION *** Go to https://actionnetwork.org/letters/pa-house-on-the-budget-its-for-a-real-shale-tax-on-natural-gas-drillers to quickly and easily send a letter to your state representative to tell him/her to insist that any budget deal MUST include recurring revenue and specifically a tax on gas drillers!
Leave a Reply