Corbett is proving to be a great friend to business. He upheld his campaign promise of no new tariffs out of concern that "we don't scare off these industries with new taxes," not even extraction fees on the potential income bonanza that is the Marcellus Shale. Which is nonsense. Nothing will scare off oil and gas companies from coming here. The Marcellus Shale is the crack cocaine of energy. "Let's make Pennsylvania the Texas of the natural-gas boom," Corbett intoned while announcing creation of an advisory commission that appears to list toward industry officials and legislators.
"It just seemed like it was Fat Tuesday for big corporations," said union leader Kathy Jellison, while Corbett asked for salary rollbacks and job freezes from state employees. Businesses won't have to give up anything for Lent.
From the well-turned metaphors to the quotes from Faulkner and Wordsworth, residents might have been lulled into believing that the budget offered no serious cuts to services or drastic changes to how Pennsylvania does business.
What Corbett failed to tell taxpayers, at least not directly, is that the damage is in the details.
Such as slashing higher education funding in half. Penn State received the largest funding cut in its history, $182 million, 52.4 percent of its state appropriation. "A funding gap this large is going to fundamentally change the way we operate," said university president Graham Spanier, "from the number of students we can educate, to the tuition we must charge, to the programs we offer and the services we can provide, to the number of employees and the research we undertake." I'm not sure how you "put families first" only for them to see state tuition potentially skyrocket.
