Metcalfe Says No Deal

Representative Daryl Metcalfe (R-Butler) has taken a stand to protect Pennsylvania taxpayers by voting against the $27.5 billion, 2007-08 state budget which includes more than $1 billion in new spending—all totaled a 5.3 percent spending increase over last year’s budget.

“It is not within the checks and balances responsibilities of the Pennsylvania General Assembly to play Let’s Make a Deal with our Spend-a-holic governor,” said Metcalfe. “It is our job to draw a non-negotiable line in the sand, that says This Is the Deal: NO! excessive spending, NO! increased borrowing and absolutely NO! again to increased taxation.”

“Thanks largely to the lockstep consent of so-called Reform House Democrats, Pennsylvania taxpayers are once again receiving a Raw Deal with final passage of this year’s budget,” said Metcalfe. “Whether its politically-extorting more tax dollars to bail out Pennsylvania’s inefficient mass transit system, using uncertain gambling-dependent revenue to pay for a new arena for the Pittsburgh Penguins or a new Philadelphia Convention Center and wasting nearly $80 million dollars to subsidize unproven government pre-school, any rank-and-file lawmaker all the way up to Majority Leader Bill DeWeese and House Speaker Dennis O’Brien, who have once again sheepishly enabled the governor’s Spend-a-holic tendencies, should be held accountable.”

In addition, Metcalfe also rejected this year’s budget because, rather than returning the $650 surplus to taxpayers where it rightfully belongs or capping state spending at the concurrent rate of inflation or population growth, it leaves the door wide open for billions of dollars in additional borrowing though negotiated special voting sessions later this fall.

“Reform has without question been the most over-kill catch phrase chosen to describe almost any action taken during the 2007-08 legislative session,” said Metcalfe. “Spending away the $650 million surplus that should have been rightfully returned to over-taxed Pennsylvanians, allowing the governor to spend hundreds of millions more than last year’s budget, hundreds of millions even beyond the rate of inflation, and mortgaging our children’s and grandchildren’s future for decades to come through billions of dollars in irresponsible borrowing can by no rational means be defined as reform.

“The real reform Pennsylvania taxpayers are rightfully demanding is for elected officials to realize that government is not our master, that government is not our partner, but that government is our servant,” said Metcalfe. “As our servant, it is long past time for our government to live up it to its primary responsibility of protecting all of our individual rights, including our right to keep more of what we earn.”