State Rep Defends Bill That Would Make English Official Language In Pa.
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Pennsylvania State Representative Daryl Metcalfe defended a bill he is co-sponsoring in Harrisburg that would make English the official language of the commonwealth.
Metcalfe, in an interview with Dom Giordano on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT, alleged that this legislation has broad support and that Representatives would be wise to send the bill to the State Senate.
"The majority of citizens, the majority of naturalized citizens who immigrated here and became citizens, the super-majority, when you look at polls and surveys, it's in the 80 percent range of people that support, citizens that support, making English the official language. Your guess is as good as mine as to why the politicians in Harrisburg and other states don't get it and join with representing their constituency and say let's make English the official language so we save tax dollars and we encourage immigrants to assimilate in a faster manner by learning the language that's spoken by the majority of people in this country."
He re-stated his belief that, while carving out certain exceptions, Pennsylvania's business should be conducted in English.
"The impact would be that official actions of the state and local governments in Pennsylvania would be required under law to be performed in English. When you're filling out documents, those documents would be in English. There's some exceptions for health care issues and for actions of the judiciary, [and] law enforcement. There are some exceptions that are required under federal law by the Federal Voting Act that passed many years ago, so there's some exceptions there. There's some exceptions built in, but the majority of actions by the government would be done in English."
Metcalfe said that while the bill is currently on hold, along with most legislation, because of the ongoing budget battle between the legislature and Governor Tom Wolf, he hopes to act on it before the end of the year."
"The next stage would be for our committee to consider the bill for a vote, which we plan on doing at some point, probably here within the Fall. The lack of a budget that we have right now with Governor Wolf demanding to increase taxes by $4 Billion plus this year on tax payers in order to get the budget passed that we have not been allowing him to move forward with that tax increase, because of the budget impasse, everything's in a realm that we're not seeing a whole lot of legislation acted on because the focus is on the budget."
