Our Republican state senate
Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania probably won't end up having endured two complete terms of frustration, unlike fellow Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan. But not by much. Both Rendell and Granholm were re-elected to their second terms by large margins, and saw Barack Obama win their states in the 2008 election by large margins, but have seen their programs frustrated by diehard Republican taxcutters and pro-business conservatives in control of their respective state Senates.
Two articles in today's Patriot-News in Harrisburg serve to highlight Rendell's frustration. One is about Senate Republican footdragging on confirming John Hanger as secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection. Rendell submitted his nomination to the Senate in August and there it sits.
Hanger, 51, is the founder of the Penn Future public policy group in Harrisburg. It champions the environment, and has made a special target of the coal-fired power plants in western Pennsylvania and the pollution they too often emit. One of the triumphs of DEP in the Rendell years was enacting regulations to control deadly mercury emissions from these plants. Hanger and then-DEP Secretary Kathleen McGinty won approval for these regs in 2006 over the steadfast opposition of Sen. Mary Jo White, R-Venango, a champion of the coal industry and chairman of the same committee that must now consider Hanger's nomination. Hmmm.
I first got to know White as a Patriot-News reporter in the early part of the decade when she and Sen. Vincent Fumo, D-Philadelphia, were steadfast supporters of telecom deregulation. That was before she moved up to chair the Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, and I was frankly shocked that someone who was so pro-public interest on telecom issues could become a roadblock to important environmental legislation. But she did. They mine coal in her district, you see. White favored weaker mercury regulations proposed by the coal industry that would have allowed polluters to buy their way out of controlling mercury.
The other interesting article in the Patriot-News today is an op-ed piece by former Dauphin County Commissioner Lowman Henry, now chairman and CEO of the conservative Lincoln Institute of Public Opinion Research of Lower Paxton Twp. The group was created in the 1990s with funding from Richard Mellon Scaife around the same time Scaife was funding the War Against the Clintons and the rise of the modern conservative movement. But I digress.
Henry is the lead apostle for the absolute dogma of today's Republican Party that taxes can never be raised, only cut. He believes that fiscal tomfoolery by Republicans in Washington, not the George W. Bush nightmare, led to big Democratic gains last year. His article praises Senate President Pro-Tem Joseph Scarnatti, a Republican, for ruling out raising taxes to close Pennsylvania's looming budget deficit. Scarnatti is also lieutenant governor of the state, a position he assumed after the death of Democratic Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll, and Henry is beside himself with the idea of Scarnatti acting to "rival Rendell as the face of state government."
It's always important to remember that Pennsylvania is required by law to have a balanced budget, and that if you don't raise taxes to fill a budget deficit, you have to cut aid to schools, limit plowing of roads in winter, close libraries, things like that. Pennsylvania has a very lean state government for its size. There isn't a significant amount of "fat" to cut. Henry would prefer that you, the public, be hurt by the budget deficit rather than the business fat cats who fund the Lincoln Institute.
When Henry refers in his articles to the "people of Penn's Woods" who will supposedly be hurt by a "job-crushing" tax increase (a favorite GOP adjective), you know he's not referring to the majority of the state that overwhelmingly re-elected Rendell in 2006 and picked Obama over John McCain by large margins in 2008. The majority of the Pennsylvania public likes reasonable big government, and is willing to pay reasonable taxes to fund it. The Republican majority in the state Senate should keep that in mind.