EDITORIAL: Budget crunch time in Pa.: Better ideas

June 24--With the 2017-18 budget's June 30 deadline looming in Harrisburg, what The Associated Press calls growing expectations of a "get-out-of-town budget" don't bode well for avoiding repeating 2016-17 budget pitfalls, or for taxpayers.

As the Commonwealth Foundation says, the 2016-17 budget "was never truly balanced, and instead included rosy forecasts of revenue growth, imposed job-killing new taxes, and avoided necessary spending reforms." After that budget's $650 million in tax hikes -- and with "modernization" of Pennsylvania's archaic liquor monopoly "on track to generate only 29 percent of the projected revenue" -- the lessons should be clear.

Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf's third straight proposal to tax Marcellus shale natural gas production must be a non-starter, like his proposed sales-tax extensions to computer services and warehousing. But lawmakers working out differences between Mr. Wolf's$32.3 million budget and the GOP-controlled House's $31.5 billion spending plan should heed Commonwealth's suggestions: Fully privatize liquor sales. Cut the state's $800 million-plus in winner-picking corporate giveaways. Reform unsustainable welfare programs. Reduce corrections costs, inmate counts and recidivism through further criminal-justice reforms. Pass the Taxpayer Protection Act, limiting spending's growth to the pace of inflation and (long non-existent) population growth. Expand tax credits for school-choice scholarship programs.

And above all, remember that Pennsylvania has a spending problem, not a revenue problem.

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