Senator Jay Costa:  My name is Jay Costa and I have the privilege of serving as the Democratic Leader of the Pennsylvania State Senate.  I’m joined here today by a number of my colleagues, both in the House and in the Senate who you will hear from shortly to discuss this particular budget and the Budget Address that was just given by Governor Tom Corbett.  The long and short is very simple, the Governor needs to stop promising and start delivering for the people of Pennsylvania.

            The $29.4 billion spending plan announced today, quite frankly in my view and I think in the view of a number of my colleagues, is a campaign budget delivered in an election year and tied to political talking points.  From job loss, failure to address healthcare, fiscal health, education, social safety net issues and the minimum wage, the problems have spiraled.  It’s absurd, to think, to look at the multiple year 180,000 job deficit and the $1 billion cut in education over the course of the past several years and Pennsylvania’s ranking is 48th place in job creation and 42nd place rating of all states in our fiscal health—for the Governor to understand that he has to pay attention to the needs of Pennsylvanians.

            Whether it’s education or whether it’s the issue of healthcare and jobs, Pennsylvanians deserve more.  With respect to the issue of education, the cumulative impact has been well over $3 billion plus, but yet today’s increase of $300 million still leaves us about 80% of the way in terms of where we need to get to, to make certain that we make investments in education.  With respect to job growth, I take exception to the Governor’s numbers that he believes that we’re moving Pennsylvania forward as it relates to jobs.  We rank 48th out of 50 states in job growth, not my numbers, but the numbers from employment statistics.

            And when you look at Pennsylvania, for the third successive year, we have lost net job growth.  In 2010, it was 86,000 jobs created, in ’11 it was 34,000 and then after that it was 24,000 and now it’s 19,000 jobs grown in 2013.  We are regressing, particular when you look at every other state in our region and every state that surrounds us.  Those are the things that Pennsylvanians want us to talk about.  There’s a lot more we can do in a number of other areas and we the Senate Democrats have been talking about what our budget priorities need to be, but we can’t lose sight of the fact that this budget fills a $29.4 billion budget with an excess of $1 billion and one time gimmicks, one time expenditures that will leave us and leave our children and leave the next future years creating a deficit for this Commonwealth that we must address in the out years. 

            And that’s why I say to you it as a campaign and a political budget that needs to be worked on.  Senate Democrats will lead that effort with our colleagues in the Senate and, hopefully, the House Democrats as well and hopefully this General Assembly to craft a budget that’s appropriate for the people of Pennsylvania, that makes the right investments in education, that makes the right investments in healthcare, that makes the right investments in making certain that we grow jobs in this Commonwealth much better than what we’ve been able to do at this point in time.