A misunderstanding

In his recent op-ed for the Centre Daily Times, state Sen. Jake Corman wrote that Pennsylvania voters “have repeatedly rejected the governor’s massive tax increases to support more government spending.” This is a very unfortunate misunderstanding on Corman’s part.

The governor who was rejected by the people of Pennsylvania was Tom Corbett. Indeed, Corbett was denied what most of his predecessors had taken for granted, a second term; he was the first Pennsylvania governor to be ousted by voters since 1971.

The reason we rejected Corbett so emphatically was that he ran up huge deficits driven by tax giveaways to the wealthy, capped off by his refusal to impose any tax whatsoever on the natural gas industry — as every other state has done.

We elected Tom Wolf precisely because he promised to close the budget gap and restore funding to education by making Pennsylvania’s most fortunate residents pay their fair share for public goods and services. We elected Wolf resoundingly, by a 10-point margin. He has a clear mandate.

Pennsylvania Republicans are determined to deny this simple fact, because elections apparently don’t matter when Democrats win them. And they are determined to cut services to Pennsylvania’s pensioners, schoolchildren and people with disabilities — all to maintain those tax giveaways to their cronies. But now they are undermining state government altogether.

Corman and his allies should stop playing games and start serving the people — including the people who put Wolf into office.

This story was originally published February 25, 2016 at 8:40 PM with the headline "A misunderstanding."