Pennsylvania AFL-CIO: State Budget Is Balanced on the Backs of Working Families While Maintaining Big Tax Breaks and Loopholes For Corporations and Gas Drillers

HARRISBURG, Pa.,  June 30, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President Rick Bloomingdale and Secretary-Treasurer Frank Snyder, in response to passage of the State Budget, said that it is balanced on the backs of working families with deep cuts in education and public services and fails to address the loopholes and tax breaks that allow corporations and gas drillers to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

"This budget is unbalanced against the working families of Pennsylvania and in favor of big corporations and gas drillers who will continue to exploit the loopholes and tax breaks that are unfair to working families and small business owners who pay their taxes," Bloomingdale declared.  "The scales tip far in one direction, and crush the hardworking people in our state,"  Bloomingdale said.

"The deep cuts in public education, higher education, job training, and care for the elderly and disabled threaten the future of our children, our schools, our colleges, our health care, our environment and good jobs," Bloomingdale continued.

"At a time when our economy is flat, our elected officials should not be throwing more people on the unemployment line, and that's exactly what this budget will do. We should be concentrating on keeping people working and putting people back to work. This budget doesn't create jobs, it destroys jobs. Further, it threatens to prolong the jobless recovery here in Pennsylvania," Bloomingdale said.

"The budget puts added pressure on school districts and municipalities to raise property taxes to make up for the reduced revenues from Harrisburg," Secretary-Treasurer Snyder noted.  "Meanwhile, some of the biggest corporations operating here, including the Marcellus Shale gas drillers pay little to nothing," Snyder said.

"As for Marcellus Shale, Pennsylvania is still importing gas from states that have enacted an extraction tax and will continue to do so for years to come. Because every major gas-producing state in the nation has a severance tax, we are helping to pay severance taxes of other states.  Think about the hypocrisy," Snyder emphasized.  "We pay our fair share to sustain public priorities, such as education and transportation infrastructure and other programs in other states, while we cut our education and public services here!" he declared.  

SOURCE Pennsylvania AFL-CIO

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