While Pennsylvania struggles with a $2 billion funding gap, Democrat governor Tom Wolf has been missing in action while lawmakers work to resolve the state’s glaring financial issues under his watch. While Wolf has been “jetting around the state to ribbon-cuttings” and “getting on the radio to talk about this and that,” he has been running away from Pennsylvania’s ongoing budget fights, appearing more concerned about his re-election than governing.
With news that the State Treasurer is taking “a temporary, $750 million line of credit to keep Pennsylvania’s general fund balance from running dry this month,” Wolf is sending a clear message to Pennsylvanians that working to fix the state’s $2 billion shortfall comes second to protecting his political future. The people of Pennsylvania deserve better.
Penn Live reports:
“It’s not that Wolf hasn’t been busy – he’s been jetting around the state to ribbon-cuttings, continuing his never-ending ‘Jobs That Pay’ tour; holding roundtable discussions on the opioid crisis and getting on the radio to talk about this and that.
But, as our pal Angela Couloumbis of The Inquirer reports, when it comes to the budget, Wolf is just like the vintage comic strip character ‘The Phantom’ – he’s the ghost who walks. And Harrisburg is taking notice.
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Indeed, when we’ve checked in with the administration over the latest, glacial developments, they’ve assuredly kept shtum. And it’s beginning to grate.
‘We haven’t had a whole lot of interaction with him directly for several months now,’ House Majority Leader Dave Reed, R-Indiana, told Couloumbis and other Capitol journalists during a round of negotiations not too long ago.
This is a decidedly different tack for Wolf, who exchanged blows with lawmakers during the seemingly endless debate over his freshman spending plan in 2015…
[W]ith re-election approaching and Wolf likely facing a tough 2018 campaign, the Democrat is going in a different direction.”