BUDGET UPDATE

HARRISBURG _ The prospects for the speedy resolution to Pennsylvania’s 97-day-old budget impasse Bullfight grew more remote Monday when Senate Republicans announced they were walking away from a compromise, $27.9 billion spending plan and working on a new budget proposal.

At a briefing with reporters, Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware, and other Senate GOP leaders said they hoped to begin moving the enabling legislation for the budget this afternoon, with votes to follow this evening and on Tuesday.

Asked for a best-case scenario on when a budget might be completed, Pileggi said he hoped to send the substitute spending plan to Gov. Ed Rendell by week’s end.

Senate Republicans did not immediately release the details of their spending proposal, but they did say its bottom total would be less than the $27.9 billion compromise plan announced on Sept. 18.

Asked whether he felt he could trust House Democrats after they reneged on the deal, Pileggi replied, “We have tried repeatedly … to work with House leaders in both caucuses. That hasn’t worked. We need to regroup.”

A group of rank-and-file House Democrats called on Senate Republicans to return to the negotiating table this afternoon. They said the Senate's approach would add weeks to resolving the stalemate.

"We're just pennies away, and could be days away, from getting this done," Rep Mike Gerber, D-Montgomery, said.

Another lawmaker, Rep. Tim Solobay, D-Washington, appeared to suggest that some sort of compromise was in the offing, but when he was asked to provide specifics, the lawmakers declined to comment.

In a tersely worded lette sent out earlier in the day today, Pileggi and Appropriations Chairman Jake Corman, R-Centre, chastised Democrats for passing a $1 billion tax package last week that GOP leaders warned would send the Sept. 18 compromise agreement back to “square one.”

Late Friday, the majority-Democrat House sent the Senate a bill that included new levies on cigars and smokeless tobacco, as well as a "severance" tax on natural gas extracted from the Marcellus shale.

They scrapped a proposed tax on arts and theatre tickets and small games of chance -- both were preferred by Senate Republicans. Democratic leaders said they did not have the votes to pass those levies among their rank-and-file, and they positioned the vote as a defense of the party’s core principles.

In their letter to House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dwight Evans, D-Philadelphia, Pileggi and Corman wrote that “by its actions last week, the House has repudiated that [compromise] agreement. Therefore, we have no agreed-to General Appropriations bill to be considered by the conference committee."

Pileggi and Corman informed Evans the Democrats that they would not be attending a planned meeting of a joint House and Senate negotiating committee that has met intermittently in an attempt to find a permanent budget accord. Instead, the two Republican leaders said they were working with Senate Democrats on a new appropriations bill and “other budget-related legislation which will be considered by the Senate this week. We hope it will receive bipartisan support in the Senate."
Budgetless since July 1, Pennsylvania remains the only state in the union without an approved budget for the 2009-2010 fiscal year.

In August, Rendell signed an $11 billion bridge budget that kept paychecks flowing to state employees and core parts of state government functioning. But Rendell left millions of dollars in direct assistance to counties and social service programs on the cutting room floor.
Administration spokesman Gary Tuma said Rendell had been briefed on the specifics of the Senate GOP budget plan and was involved in crafting some of its components. But Tuma declined to comment on the details of the budget. He also declined to comment on whether Rendell would sign the bill if it reached his desk.