Government, His Edness strongly believes, should help hurting families, should battle disease and should better school the next generation.
It's just that any progressive Democrat in a nonprogressive, fiscally conservative state with a politically divided Legislature isn't likely to get what he or she believes in, no matter how strongly.
Plus, Ed's spanned the fiscal map, from a budget to slash mass transit, health care and more in his first try in '03 (a gimmick that backfired; Republicans loved it) to pushing for personal-income-tax hikes, which earned him the nickname "Ed Spendell."
Tomorrow he gets his last shot at budget-making when he addresses a joint House-Senate session to offer a new spending plan, his final one as governor. It's under wraps. Even legislative leaders don't get a peek until a morning briefing just before the speech.
But because of the economy and Pennsylvania's partisanship, it's a good bet that it contains no new big or costly ideas, or none that can survive the process.
Approval is due June 30 (ha!) for the start of the July 1 fiscal year. The only possibility that that will happen (after seven straight years of failure) is because the whole House and half the Senate face re-election, and members want y'all to forget their level of ineptitude.
Last year's budget wasn't agreed to until October and wasn't fiscally in place until Rendell signed a bill legalizing table games last month.
So what's Ed say tomorrow?
He's already indicated that he'll try again to tax smokeless tobacco (we're the only state that does not) and cigars (we and Florida do not) and the extraction of natural gas (we're one of only four states that don't).
Beyond that, says Press Secretary Gary Tuma, "He's going to discuss the long-range fiscal health of the commonwealth" - which, in case you haven't heard, isn't all that good.
