Date: August 12, 2025
Contact: Erica Freeman, Deputy Communications Director, freemane@pennpolicy.org
Statement on the Senate Republicans’ Pennsylvania Budget Bill
Republican legislators pass a budget that fails to meet Pennsylvanians’ needs, underfunding Medicaid, education, public transit, and more
HARRISBURG, PA — The Pennsylvania Policy Center released the following statement by Executive Director Marc Stier on the budget passed by Senate Republicans on August 12, 2025.
“Six weeks after the budget deadline, Senate Republicans have voted today to flat-fund education and every other part of the state budget. This budget fails to meet the moral and constitutional requirement—as interpreted by the General Assembly itself last year—to fully and fairly fund our schools. It fails to fund Medicaid at the level necessary to pay for the health care needs the state is obligated to meet by state and federal law. And it fails to meet the needs of Pennsylvanians in every other area: public transit, roads and bridges, human services, and environmental protection.
It is simply not a serious proposal that Governor Shapiro and the House Democrats can accept.
Senate Republicans say that the responsible budget the House recently passed spends more than the state will receive in revenue. But so did the budget they passed today. So did the budget they passed last year. And so did the budget they passed the year before that.
All these budgets were, and could again be, balanced by drawing down the accumulated General Fund surplus and the Rainy Day Fund.
We at the Pennsylvania Policy Center are glad that the Senate Republicans have finally recognized that the accumulated surplus will run out at some point and the state will then have to figure out a way to balance the budget. They ignored this problem last year when, in similar circumstances, they hypocritically passed a tax cut that would reduce revenues by $2.6 billion every single year.
But six weeks after a budget is due is no time to start talking about long-term issues that the Senate Republicans, like others in Harrisburg, have ignored in order to justify an irresponsible and unconstitutional state budget for the current fiscal year.
Nor is it the time to redirect necessary capital funds for public transit to pay for transit operating costs—this adds nothing to transit funding over the long term and is not an honest and serious way to run railroad and bus systems.
Nor is it time for Republicans in Harrisburg to return to their fantasy of eight years ago that surpluses in special funds should be redirected to the General Fund.
Now is the time to pass a responsible budget that is balanced with the accumulated surplus. And when that is done, all parties in Harrisburg need to turn their attention to the long-term fiscal crisis the state faces.”
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