Shhh…PA Budget Talks Begin Again “Quietly” — Without Gov. Wolf
Shhh. We have to whisper for this bit of news. Pennsylvania state budget talks began yesterday–“quietly” according to mainstream (Democrat) media. Staffers from no less than four House and Senate caucuses met yesterday, and will continue their meetings today and tomorrow, to see if they can hammer out a compromise budget. The dirty little secret is that no Gov. Wolf staffers are invited. Republicans and Democrats will work out the budget without Wolf and then let Wolf pretend it was all his idea in the first place. That’s how mainstream media covers for one of their own who’s gone off the rails as much as Wolf has. WORD IS (shhh! keep your voice down)…(oops, sorry)…word is that the budget negotiators will first agree how much extra spending they can get away with–put a number to it. After that they’ll figure out how they will raise insane amounts of new revenue to pay for it all. Yes, a potential severance tax is (unfortunately) still alive and kicking. We hope and trust Republicans will hold true and refuse any new taxes on the Marcellus Shale industry…
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Wow. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf is as stubborn about wanting to raise PA taxes as a jackass–his party’s mascot. Wolf’s latest proposed budget was voted down last week–with nine Democrats in the House voting against it (see 
In the end, it was PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s own Democrat Party House members that sunk his latest high tax budget proposal. Nine Dems voted against the Wolf budget, showing bipartisan support for defeating Wolf’s high taxes, including lack of support for a high severance tax. Every single Republican, even the RINOs, voted against Wolf’s unpopular budget proposal. Trying to spin his humiliating defeat as some sort of plus, Wolf said he was “encouraged” that “so many Democrats” actually voted yes for his budget. Talk about chutzpah. Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-Butler, has some big cojones–he equated Wolf with a thug trying to mug somebody, taking all of their money at gunpoint. Wow! It’s about time there was some frank talk about the bully Wolf has become in ten short months–and some push-back against it. Time for Republicans to pass a budget and get a few of those Dems to go along and override a Wolf veto. Time to govern without Wolf if he refuses to do his job…
Once again PA Gov. Tom Wolf is proving himself to be a partisan hack, and certainly not up to the job the good people of Pennsylvania elected him to do. He’s a typical tax and spend liberal (voted the most liberal governor in America by the non-partisan InsideGov, see 
This week should tell us a lot about the future of a severance tax in Pennsylvania–at least the near-term (this year) future. PA Gov. Tom Wolf, a failed governor who’s only been in office for 10 months, is demanding a high severance tax on top of an already high impact fee (the equivalent of a severance tax) in order to pay back teachers’ unions for voting him into office. He’s playing a dangerous game of chicken–dangerous for education, dangerous for all of the agencies without money to operate, dangerous for every citizen in the Commonwealth. Today Wolf will float yet another budget calling for a high severance tax and it will get voted on tomorrow. Prospects for Wolf passing his budget, even though he’s been lobbying RINOs in the House and Senate (bribing them with political promises), don’t look good. In an act of supreme hubris, Wolf says if he loses this vote, Pennsylvania loses. We say it’s the opposite…
PA Gov. Tom Wolf has dropped all pretense of being a nice guy and has turned into a mafioso bully because he can’t get his own way. We understand. He made a back-room deal with teachers’ unions and they delivered him an election victory. He owes them and the only way he can pay them off is by taxing the Marcellus Shale industry into oblivion. Wolf’s latest tactic is to call the Republicans who won’t go along with his Marcellus-killing severance tax “the bad guys” and appeal to RINOs in the House and Senate–those like Rep. Gene DiGirolamo (from the Philly area)–those he calls “good Republican legislators”. Wolf plans to make the RINOs an offer they can’t refuse in order to support a severance tax. Will they bow to pressure from the don?…
The ideologically rigid, most-liberal governor in America (according to InsideGov), Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, yesterday vetoed a stopgap spending budget passed by the Republican-controlled House and Senate, further damaging the people he pretends to want to help–little children in schools. Falling back on the same old lies and political pandering rhetoric, Wolf said he was vetoing the bill because it “sells out the people of Pennsylvania to oil and gas companies and Harrisburg special interests.” It’s now open war on the Marcellus industry by the Wolf administration. In his veto letter, Wolf doesn’t mention that his own special interests–primarily teachers’ unions–are the real reason he’s holding out for an obscenely high severance tax on Marcellus Shale production. Sometimes politicians like Wolf have conveniently leaky memories. Wolf is perfectly happy with driving the state right over an economic cliff if he doesn’t get his way on a severance tax, no matter who (i.e., children) get hurt…
Just last week MDN told you about the bone-headed proposal from a partisan group in West Virginia calling for a doubling or tripling of the severance tax on natural gas liquids–unless those NGLs stay in the state (see 
The partisan (Democrat) West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy, which pretends to be nonpartisan and above the political fray but isn’t, has just published a so-called policy brief titled “A Win-Win Marcellus Shale Tax Incentive” (full copy below). The “brief” attempts to make the case for doubling or tripling the severance tax on natural gas liquids produced in WV (from 5% to 10% or 15%)–giving exemptions to the tax increase for those who keep the NGLs extracted in the state. The recommendation hopes to boost the attractiveness of petrochemical plants like the proposed Odebrecht cracker plant that would use ethane, the primary NGL extracted in WV, by making it more expensive to send WV’s ethane across the border, to say either Shell’s proposed cracker in PA or PTT Global’s proposed cracker in OH. The tone of the “report” is that WV has been raped and pillaged in the past–their precious coal stolen and carted away to other states–and WV can’t let that history repeat itself again. Better to shut down drilling rather than have any of it “exported” to other states. It is misguided and faulty thinking…
Last week MDN told you that Ohio’s RINO legislators continue to work on raising the Utica Shale severance tax in the state “behind closed doors” (see 
The Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association (PIOGA) has been at the forefront in opposing an industry-killing severance tax proposed by new governor Tom Wolf (see 
Once again Ohio Republicans are starting to lose their cool and are considering a dalliance with a high Utica Shale severance tax proposed by RINO Gov. John Kasich (who’s running for president, but then nobody knows since he’s at 0% in the polls). Perhaps state Republicans think by giving Kasich what he wants in a high severance tax it will enhance his presidential prospects with conservatives? (NOT!) Whatever the reason, Ohio’s left-leaning PBS outlet at Kent State is reporting legislators are meeting “behind closed doors” with members of the oil and gas industry to beg and plead for an increase in the severance tax…
Pennsylvania Democrats are finally waking up and beginning to get nervous that state Republicans might actually not cave on a Marcellus-killing severance tax after all. How do we know? One of the Democrat public relations outlets–the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette–penned an “editorial” calling for a stopgap, short-term budget. PA’s Gov. Tom Wolf, who has been crowned the most liberal governor in America by the non-partisan website InsideGov (see 
Pennsylvania’s Democrats continue to fight dirty in the budget battle–in their losing effort to pile big taxes on a single industry, the Marcellus Shale industry. The latest in the dirty war they’re waging: the extremely partisan Democrat-controlled so-called Independent Fiscal Office (yes, a PA state government office funded by taxpayers) has issued a report to sycophantic media outlets (but not the general public via its website) to forecast a decrease in Marcellus Shale impact fee revenue for 2015…