by KYW's Tony Romeo
There’s been a major development in Pennsylvania’s week-and-a-half old budget standoff.
Governor Ed Rendell wants to raise the income tax. Legislative Republicans do not.
Now, Democrats who control the House say they will relent and bring up for a vote an austere, no-tax budget passed by the Senate.
House speaker Keith McCall says that if passed, he believes the pain that would result would cause lawmakers to revisit the budget later through a supplemental appropriation:
"Hopefully that would be a mechanism to then negotiate a supplemental [appropriation] or something, when people finally realize how draconian and bad that budget is."
But House Republican leader Sam Smith says that if passed by the House as is, the Senate bill, now two months old, will be out of balance:
“The House Democrats have gone from one extreme of a bad idea to the other extreme.”
House Republicans say they will propose their own alternative.
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