Opposition Celebrates Wolf's Acceptance Of Legislature's Budget

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Governor Tom Wolf has ended the Commonwealth's budget impasse by allowing the budget passed by the legislature to become law.

Matt Brouillette, President and CEO of the Commonwealth Foundation, told Chris Stigall on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT that this is a clear win for taxpayers.

"This is huge. You have to remember, it was almost a year ago that the Governor called for $4.5 Billion in tax increases, a 16 percent increase in state spending and he got zero tax increases, the increase in spending was a little over two percent, no tax hikes included in this budget."

He said the Governor Wolf was forced to relent on his demands because too many members of his own party were moving away from him.

"You ended up getting 13 House Democrats joining the Republicans. That's only three short of a veto-proof majority in the House. It became very clear to Governor Wolf that he may very well find himself to be a lame duck Governor less than 18 months into his term because there were, clearly, enough Democrats ready to bolt and say enough is enough, this holding of kids hostage, we've cost the schools over $50 Million in interest payments. This is all unnecessary. It became quite clear that the Governor had lost control even of his own party."

Pennsylvania's Speaker of the House, Mike Turzai also weighed in during an interview with Dom Girodano and claimed that the Republican's intention all along was to watch over the commonwealth's finances.

"You have to be fiscal stewards of people's hard earned money and I know it sounds trite, but if you keep that as your basic objective, then always you're looking at the expenditure side first and saying, okay, where do we need to hold the line in terms of spending, because then you're protecting people's hard earned money. The thing here is the Governor was leading off with taxes and only recently was he arguing a concern about a structural deficit. If you're concerned about a structural deficit, you're not increasing spending to match whatever those revenues are. What you have to do is you have to hold the line on your spending or drive some of your spending down.