With wide budget vote loss, onus is on Gov. Wolf to push ahead with compromise: Editorial

Gov. Tom Wolf suffered a loss on Wednesday when the Pennsylvania House rejected his tax plan. It wasn't close: 127-73.

He can try to spin it however he wants, but he couldn't even get all 84 of the chamber's Democrats to support his plan, and not one Republican broke ranks to hand him the magic number of 102 votes required for passage.

  • MORE: 100 reasons the budget is late

We thought the vote would be a turning point, if both sides accepted the results. It was a scoreboard moment, showing the governor that support is weak for his tax plan. He apparently doesn't think so. In fact, he turned the spanking into a show of support. Maybe he is catching on to this politician stuff after all.

"We put together a real big group of votes to do something really tough," Wolf said after the vote. "The fact that 73 were willing to do that... I think sends a strong signal of support for addressing the real problems that Pennsylvania faces."

Really? That doesn't sound like someone who just had his plan beaten up.

Now, budget talks might begin without him being involved, at least initially, according to PennLive's Charles Thompson. But he's also apparently not prepared to give up on some of this his tax tenets.

All of this makes us go back to basics: Why do we have this long-running Budget Battle Royale 2015?

It's relatively simple: As the 100-day mark disappears in the rearview mirror, neither side is properly motivated enough to truly compromise.

Fear is a great motivator. And what do politicians fear? Rightly or wrongly, a defeat on Election Day has to rank relatively high on most of their lists.

It's been posited that Wolf doesn't have that fear, meaning that he will stick to his guns because he isn't motivated by being re-elected. Others have a different take, that he's still in campaign mode and hasn't shifted to governing.

Legislative Republicans, many from extremely conservative districts, have little fear of defeat in their next election.

And when they do hear from them, those same lawmakers say they're receiving a single message: Hold the line on taxes.

So both sides continue to squat on principles. Or perhaps obstinance. Or perhaps fear of showing weakness. Or all of the above.

Maybe we - us rank-and-file Pennsylvanians - are to blame.

After all, we elected a Democrat as governor on one hand while increasing the Republican majorities in both houses of the Legislature.

Maybe that wasn't a smart move. But come to think of it, even when Republicans controlled the governorship and the Legislature, there wasn't lockstep agreement.

Maybe we simply haven't been a pain in the rears to our leaders.

As we pointed out tongue-and-cheekily in our 100 reasons why we don't have a budget: At No. 1 was, 'See all those protesters, waving signs, shouting slogans and demanding that lawmakers do their jobs and pass a budget? Oh. Well, neither do we."

Because we aren't there.

Maybe we are numb to it. Maybe we expect chaos. Maybe we don't care. Or maybe it just hasn't affected enough of us yet. Remember the old joke: A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours.

Will it take drastic action to get a resolution? One school superintendent we spoke to recently said maybe a school district shutting down because it doesn't have enough funds might do the trick.

Wolf already thinks he's compromised on everything. Still, the thought that there can't be a compromise - in which BOTH sides give up something to ultimately reach an agreement - simply continues to baffle us.

While Wolf is but one man and the Legislature numbers several hundred, we are putting the onus on him to come up with something. He has the burden of proof after Wednesday's vote. But the truth is, compromise by definition must involve both sides, so we urge Republicans not to revel in their victory.

Digging in your heels is easy to do but it isn't governing.

But governing too often is lost today. It's all about wins and losses.

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