Shapiro says ‘good progress’ being made in state budget negotiations; criticizes One Big Beautiful Bill

As the June 30 deadline draws closer, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said Wednesday that good progress was being made on delivering a state budget.

Speaking in Lancaster to tout his administration’s work on affordable housing, the governor said that both sides understand the set of issues to work through and that concessions are going to be the order of the day.

Earlier in the day, Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R-Armstrong/ Indiana/Jefferson/Westmoreland) told a gaggle of reporters that he did not expect a budget to be completed by the date mandated by state law and hinted that it may not be done until mid-July.

“We understand the issues that need to be addressed,” said Shapiro. “I’m not suggesting that we’ve agreed on the answers on how to address them. We’re each going to have to give a little bit, and we’re going to get it done.”

The governor addressed the concept floated by Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward (R-Westmoreland) about the possibility of adopting a six-month budget.

Ward told WHTM’s This Week in Pennsylvania that she’s open to a short-term solution, given that the Commonwealth is in a “wait and see” mode to understand what may or may not have funding from Washington.

“It’s scary both ways, right? If we pass a budget and we pay for things in that budget that the federal government says we don’t need to pay for, maybe an item or two, we always have to pay for it, or we cut it,” said Ward. “And on the other hand, if the federal government says, ‘you’re going to pay a bigger percentage,’ we need to know that because then we don’t have any money for anything else, we have to do our obligations first. So I think we’re in a wait-and-see state.”

“We have a legal responsibility to pass an annual budget,” said Shapiro. “We’re not going to do a six-month budget. Representative (Matt) Bradford (D-Montgomery) has made that clear as well. We have a responsibility to make some tough choices, to compromise, to get this done … and we’re going to get it done.”

Shapiro deflected a question about Pittman’s comment that the Senate could be willing to leave Harrisburg without funding transit in the Commonwealth, but responded to another comment that recreational marijuana would not be part of the budget this cycle.

“I think this is an issue of competitiveness,” he said. “Every state around us, with the exception of West Virginia, has legalized and Pennsylvanians are driving into those states in order to purchase cannabis legally and pay taxes to those states so those school kids get more money for their schools, their parks and roads and bridges get repaired, their mass transit systems get funded, their housing stock gets replenished. 

“I’m not sure why we want to do that for the good people of Ohio or New York or Maryland or New Jersey, when we should be doing it for people here in Pennsylvania. I think it’s a competitiveness issue. It’s time has come.”

Shapiro also addressed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” currently under consideration in the United States Senate and how it affects Pennsylvanians.

“They would slash funding for Medicaid and SNAP and use those dollars to be able to give tax cuts to those at the highest income levels,” said the governor. “In addition to that, they would slash the tax credits that are there creating jobs in Pennsylvania around renewable energy and alternative energy sources. All of that would be bad for Pennsylvania.

“I’ve got 25 rural hospitals right now that are operating at a loss, operating at a deficit, that rely extensively, almost the majority of their funding coming through public payers like Medicaid. They would likely shutter if these cuts went into place over time. So rural hospitals are going to lose out. Half a million Pennsylvanians are going to lose health care. 140,000 Pennsylvanians are going to lose food assistance. And you would think that the Senate of the United States would see that and go, ‘well, we don’t want to inflict that kind of pain on the people of Pennsylvania, the people across this country.’ Let’s figure out a way to do that better. And instead, they made it worse.

“Don’t give me this nonsense where you’re going to try and justify not going to half a million Pennsylvanians off of health care and say it’s because of waste, fraud and abuse, right? Here’s the other thing they say. They say, well, we don’t want health care going to people who are undocumented. They have a different word for those who are undocumented. Let me also explain something. Here in Pennsylvania, the law does not allow Medicaid to be used for those who are undocumented. So their rationale for this is all BS. What they’re really doing is not going to whole bunch of people out to health care, taking a bunch of food away from folks in the name of giving a tax cut to those who, quite frankly, don’t need it right now. Okay, that’s wrong, and we got to stand up against that. And I’m going to continue to speak up against that. And I hope cooler heads will prevail in the United States Senate.”

Steve Ulrich is managing editor of Politics PA.