HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s budget impasse reached its 100th day Wednesday with triple digits serving as a fitting representation of the political temperature inside the State Capitol.
Be it during press conferences held by all four caucuses in the House and Senate or during committee meetings and floor sessions, lawmakers used the opportunity to cast blame against rival Democrats or Republicans as to why Pennsylvania’s 253 full-time elected legislators and its governor have again failed to deliver a budget.
The budget is due annually by June 30. This marks the fourth consecutive year and the 17th of the last 27 that Pennsylvania’s budget is late.
With Michigan having completed its budget on Wednesday, Pennsylvania is the only state in the nation without an operating budget for 2025-26. That’s amid the ongoing federal government shutdown.
Now at 100 days along, the stalemate risks county governments, local school boards and human service providers having to take out loans to float operations and could lead to service cuts and layoffs.
Pennsylvania’s House Democratic majority, joined by three Republicans, carried a 105-98 vote Wednesday, advancing a budget proposal to the Senate, a $50.2 billion pitch that’s about $400 million less than what the lower chamber proposed when it previously advanced a budget on July 14.
But the budget hasn’t been agreed to.
The Senate Republican majority prefers instead to stick with spending at 2024-25 levels, $47.6 billion, as they had offered in a bill on Aug. 12.
Both chambers gaveled out Wednesday with no scheduled plans to return until later this month — the Senate on Oct. 20 and the House on Oct. 27. Either chamber could return to the Capitol at the call of respective leadership should a budget deal be reached.
House Republican Minority Leader Jesse Topper blamed Gov. Josh Shapiro for proposing a budget “so out of line with the fiscal realities of this commonwealth that it has led us to this point.”
Topper said House Republicans have been “very clear” about their priorities — capitalize on Pennsylvania’s natural resources and energy sector, end the pursuit of a regional or state-based cap and trade program for carbon emissions, enact a system of school choice and ensure social welfare programs are efficient and are free of fraud, waste and abuse.
And, he acknowledged the difficulties of divided government, one where Democrats hold the House by a single seat, Republicans control the Senate by a 27-22 margin and a Democrat is governor.
“But divided does not mean dysfunctional. It does not have to be dysfunctional. We can set a tone in this chamber and this state government that can reverberate throughout America if we put our minds to it and do it,” Topper said.
Shapiro said the Senate Republican majority is failing to do its job because in the 246 days since he presented a $51.5 billion budget proposal, the upper chamber was in session for just 32 voting days.
“It’s clear that the state Senate is playing politics here,” Shapiro said Wednesday. “We also are sitting in Pennsylvania on an $11 billion surplus. There’s no excuses anymore. They’ve got to do their job.”
Senate Republican Majority Leader Joe Pittman denied that his 27-member caucus is fractured over negotiations and said rhetoric from House Democrats on Wednesday set the budgetary process further backward.
That rhetoric saw House Democratic Majority Appropriations Chair Jordan Harris take a cue from Washington in describing Harrisburg’s budget impasse as the “Senate Republican shutdown.”
Democratic House Speaker Joanna McClinton accused the Senate Republican majority of concocting a series of excuses to maintain the deadlock, while House Democratic Majority Leader Matt Bradford said the impasse is being used by Republicans as an attack against “a very popular governor.”
“No, we’re not doing vouchers. We won’t. No, we’re not getting out of RGGI without taking care of our environment, period, full stop. And, we’ve all heard the governor clearly where he is on that issue. But, let me tell you something, if you want to compromise and you want to have these conversations in public, we’ll have conversations in public. We won’t negotiate in public, but don’t think we haven’t offered on every single issue. We are more than willing to compromise on issues that are painfully tough for this caucus,” Bradford said.
What wasn’t spoken on Wednesday, evidently, were words of agreement between all parties that a budget deal was imminent.
There wasn’t agreement, either, on Pennsylvania Treasurer Stacy Garrity’s recently announced program offering short-term loans to certain organizations to maintain operations while a budget deal is hammered out.
Senate Democrats challenge the legality of the program and said it caters only to certain programs while leaving out public schools, for example. Garrity opened it to county governments, providers of Head Start and Pre-K Counts, domestic violence services and rape crisis centers — all of which are contracted with the state. Republicans say that eligibility could expand as it already has to include the latter three programs.
The Senate Republican majority, along with two Democrats, carried a 29-20 vote to approve a bill that would waive the 4.5% annual interest rate through the program, which Garrity said she’s legally obligated to charge or would otherwise waive interest herself.
While the bill moved through the Senate, it would have to clear the House and avoid a governor’s veto to be enacted.
Garrity is backed by the Pennsylvania Republican Party in her 2026 gubernatorial campaign. Shapiro hasn’t yet announced that he’ll seek reelection but is expected to pursue another four-year term. He’s also among leading Democrats considered challengers for the 2028 presidential election.
Given those dynamics, the loan program is itself mired in the political divisions stymying the Legislature’s operations and its pursuit of a spending plan for 2025-26.