Casey. A separate transportation budget and federal funds bring the total budget to about $20 billion.
Most of the legislation slated for votes this week involves leftovers from the enactment of the fiscal 1989 state budget, which went into effect July 1.
When Casey and the Republican-controlled Senate disagreed on spending and tax plans last summer, Casey used his line-item veto to delete items he did not like and then signed the budget document into law. That averted an immediate funding crisis but left many items outstanding.
One of the major disputes of the summer - whether or not to provide a tax
cut this year - has been resolved in a manner that allows both Casey and the GOP to claim victory, and both are doing so.
The settlement involves an increase of the income limits under which wage earners may be exempted from paying the 2.1 percent personal income tax. The change would, for example, allow a person earning less than $6,300 yearly to avoid the income tax; the current threshold is $4,500.
Allowing more lower-income workers to escape the tax will cost the state an estimated $12.5 million in revenue.
For Republicans, the agreement represents a legislative and political victory because, they say, they forced Casey, a Democrat, to swallow a tax cut even though he had vowed that he would not reduce taxes.
But the administration contends that the proposal does not actually represent a tax cut because no rate was changed, merely the number of people affected. Spokesmen also note that what started as a Republican-proposed cut of $98 million largely for business interests was whittled down to a $12.5 million reduction for the state's lower-income earners.
"People pay less in taxes. That's a tax cut to me," said Robert A. Bittenbender, executive director of the Senate Appropriations Committee. "I don't know what else it could be."
