At a press briefing on Friday, Gov. Josh Shapiro spoke about the impacts of the Republican budget.
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00:00Governor, on the topic of the upcoming state budget, are there any concerns about cuts at the federal level that could affect initiatives like grant programs for local fire departments?
00:13Yes. Cuts at the federal level could negatively impact this commonwealth and our fiscal position.
00:21Understand that when I announced my budget in February, we had a roughly $11, $12 billion surplus.
00:29A lot of other states around us are dealing with deficits. We had a surplus.
00:34I proposed not only investing in things like education and public safety and economic development.
00:39I also proposed cutting taxes, frankly, cutting them more aggressively than even my Republican colleagues in Harrisburg had wanted to do because I'm going to spur on economic growth.
00:49I think it's further important to understand that the commonwealth receives significant amounts of funds from the federal government.
00:58And so if they cut those funds back, as they have in agriculture, as just one example, that makes it incredibly hard.
01:08It makes it harder for us to do our jobs to make the investments and provide the tax cuts that we want to be able to provide.
01:16Let me give you just one example. There's a lot of talk at the federal level of cuts to Medicaid.
01:22We'll see where it ultimately ends up, but it would seem to me that for them to be able to do the tax deal they want to do,
01:29it's going to be very hard to not have some impact on Medicaid.
01:33Understand that about $30 billion of what we spend on Medicaid, of roughly $50 billion or so, comes from the federal government.
01:42So if they make cuts to Medicaid, we can't make that up at the state level.
01:49And so people are going to be thrown off Medicaid. Folks won't have access to critical health care services.
01:55Take education. There's been talk about cutting the education spend from the federal level to the states.
02:02Much of that money goes directly to the school districts, not actually through the state budget.
02:07But we're looking to try and add about a billion dollars in new investment in our schools across Pennsylvania.
02:14And the federal government right now invests over a billion dollars.
02:18If any of that money is cut at the federal level, we're going to be clamoring to try and make those new investments
02:25at the same time federal money is being taken away and our school districts will suffer.
02:30Now, I think we've got to recognize these budgets are not passed at the federal level yet.
02:35So I don't want to be an alarmist. I'm just going based on what some of our congressmen and senators and the president has said.
02:42We'll see what their ultimate budget looks like.
02:46But to get to the heart of your question, any cuts at the federal level are going to make it way harder
02:51for us to make investments in education and safety and economic development and cut taxes for Pennsylvanians.
02:57Them pushing off the challenges at the federal level to the states or municipalities like the mayor has to run
03:04is only going to make lives much tougher here and budgets much tougher to pass.
03:10We've been successful at being able to pass budgets on a bipartisan basis.
03:14I want to be able to do that again.
03:16And I hope our federal partners aren't working against us in that process.
03:19I think you're going to happen today.
03:32No doubt.
03:33I have.
03:34And I hope.
03:35I hope.
03:37Bye bye.
03:39Bye bye.
03:44Bye bye.
03:45Bye bye.