Saccone+Defends+State+GOP+Budget+Proposal

=By Patrick Cloonan= =//Published in the McKeesport Daily News//= =//5/13/11//= = = = = =An area state lawmaker is defending the budget proposal his fellow House Republicans have issued.= ="All schools will have to take cuts to help cover the $4 billion in debt the (Democrats) created," state Rep. Rick Saccone, R-Elizabeth Township, said in an email Thursday night, "but the GOP has cut in other areas of the budget to try and restore some money to education."= =Saccone`s comments followed passage of the House GOP plan earlier this week along a party-line vote by the state House Appropriations Committee.= =Saccone also said complaints such as those issued by state Rep. Bill Kortz, D-Dravosburg, "is pure sophistry."= =Kortz called attention to the claim of House Democrats such as Appropriations Minority Chairman Joseph F. Markosek, D-Monroeville, that the state now has a $506 million revenue surplus "which we expect to grow to $1 billion."= =Others have disputed that claim, based on April tax collections, including a conservative think tank, the Commonwealth Foundation.= ="One month of strong tax collections does not establish a trend," CF director of policy research Nathan A. Benefield wrote this week. "While April`s collections were ahead of estimates, March`s tax collections were behind forecasts."= =For the year, Benefield went on, the state is only 2.3 percent ahead of projections.= =Saccone said his Democratic colleagues "have no credibility on any budget" since their "tax and spend" solutions "are the same ones that got us into the current mess to begin with."= =Kortz predicted that the House GOP budget proposal "will still result in school program cuts, layoffs, increased property taxes and increased tuitions."= ="They keep insisting that property taxes will go up but that will only happen if school districts fail to make the proper cuts needed to rein in years of overspending and offering unreasonable increases during a recession," wrote Saccone, a former Elizabeth Forward school director.= ="Eventually, the state and school districts will have to deal with the salaries, pensions and benefits problems many have avoided for far too long," he said.= =Saccone predicted that the final 2011-12 budget will be "the first balanced, on-time budget with no tax increase in eight years."= = = = Read more: [|Saccone defends state GOP budget proposal - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review] [] = = =

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