Rendell and legislators to discuss taxes

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell is scheduled to meet with legislative leaders Monday. A top Republican says the governor will be disappointed if he’s expecting to convince the General Assembly to raise taxes.

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell is scheduled to meet with legislative leaders Monday. A top Republican says the governor will be disappointed if he’s expecting to convince the General Assembly to raise taxes.

Listen:
[audio: 090626sdtax.mp3]

We’re now days away from Pennsylvania’s legal budget deadline. Governor Rendell says a broad-based tax increase like a half-percentage point hike in the personal income tax is unavoidable. He convinced the Republican-controlled Senate to raise the income tax in 2003, but Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi of Chester and Delaware Counties says that’s not happening this year.

Pileggi: The membership was different in 2003. We have many new members since then. A new leadership team. And they firmly believe-both the leadership team and the rank-and-file members-that raising the personal income tax in 2009, when we have record unemployment, record mortgage foreclosure, is the absolute wrong policy to pursue.

Rendell has shaved an additional 500 million dollars from his budget proposal, but due to welfare increases it’s still near the 29 billion dollar mark.Pileggi says the final budget will have to be below the 27.3 billion dollar plan the Senate passed in May, because state revenues have shrunk since then.