The Pennsylvania House of Representatives is giving people reason to be optimistic.
The lawmakers gave their approval Tuesday to the 2026-27 budget.
The good news? This is the earliest a budget has moved this far in nine years.
The bad news? This is not the finish line.
Pennsylvania’s legislators — and governors, to be fair — pass budgets like children putting off their parts of a group project that makes up 80% of a semester grade.
There is no reason to celebrate yet. House action is not blanket General Assembly approval. It is not the governor’s signature. It is not a fully realized plan for Pennsylvania spending come July 1.
This $53.3 billion proposal is encouraging. It’s a great start. But if they were kids doing that school group project, it would just be the outline. There’s still a lot of work to do before turning it in for a final grade.
That also means there is too much time for putting things off. There’s more than two months before it’s due, right?
We still have to figure in time for hemming and hawing in the Senate. The likelihood of the House version passing the Senate unchanged is not something you could get any of the sportsbooks to take a dollar on.
That means anything that chamber passes would have to go back to the House again, meaning we end up in a Democrat-versus-Republican tug-of-war just in the Legislature, without even involving Gov. Josh Shapiro.
This isn’t intended to be pessimistic. It’s just hard to see the sunny side of progress like this when history has taught us that we are more likely to see something like last year.
Failure to pass the budget on time led to counties, municipalities, school districts and other public entities scrambling to make up shortfalls. Some are still underwater on the consequences.
Harrisburg has the opportunity to make us optimists again.
This is progress, and that should be celebrated. Now, it’s the Senate’s turn to show it can deliver. Shapiro doesn’t get to sit this out, either. Prove to Pennsylvanians that the Keystone State can get the job done on time.
It would be nice to see these crazy kids finish the year with an A.
