Issue Position: Fiscal Responsibility

Issue Position

Fiscal responsibility includes the idea that the state must meet its obligations. PA has a revenue problem due to years of giving special favors to corporations. The Marcellus Shale severance tax should have been in place years ago. The Delaware Loophole allowing corporations to avoid paying any Corporate Net Income Tax has been around even longer. PA refuses to tax smokeless tobacco, as all other states do.

Politicians should always be on the lookout to do things more efficiently, and to cut programs that are no longer needed and aren't working.

But we are cutting programs in a penny-wise, pound-foolish manner. The cuts of today will cost us more money in the future. By cutting money to maintain roads and bridges, we are making sure it will cost us more to fix them in the future. In addition, by not spending the money now when we should, we are costing construction companies and workers jobs, and hurting our economy and tax revenues. We create a downward spiral.

PA has cut thousands of teachers and education workers. We must fund them. For every $1 billion in spending to fix roads and bridges, 30,000 jobs are created. It's time to meet our responsibilities, and it will create jobs.

I propose cutting all state elected officials pay by 10%, and eliminated their annual, automatic cost of living pay raise. If PA can't afford to fund our police, we certainly shouldn't be paying big salaries to the politicians who can't or won't fix the problem.

Pennsylvania must be fiscally responsible, pay for its roads, bridges and education, and sustain the jobs that go with them.

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