My friend's husband works for the state as a historian at Fort Pitt. With all the state budget mess--which I'm surprised hasn't been covered a bit more in the news--they are preparing for him to get furloughed temporarily come next Monday, because no one has much faith that the General Assembly and Fast Eddie will remove their collective head from their collective rear end by then.
What I've gathered from the minimal news coverage is, Fast Eddie and the Dems want to use budget negotiations as leverage to address other, non-budget issues, whereas the Pubs refuse to
address those issues until later. My translation: Both sides are engaged in a political pissing contest, with 24,000 state employees on the receiving end of all those golden showers.
Really, Harrisburg, why don't you just whip 'em out and measure already, so you can get back to the business of keeping this state up and running? In case you forgot, that is your damn J-O-B.
My friend and her hubby should be fine financially, but there are a lot of people who won't be in the event of a furlough. How much breathing room do you think the guy working the counter at the PennDOT license center has in his savings account? What about the guy sweeping the floor at one of the new casinos? (Oh, sorry--yeah that 24,000 number is only state employees, it doesn't count the people who just got their casino jobs a few months ago.)
Right now there are 24,000 Pennsylvanians out there thinking, "If I don't do my job, I get fired. So if these guys don't do their job....I get fired. WTF???"
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