Editorial: Budget passing is bare minimum

The best you can say about the Pennsylvania Legislature’s move on the budget is that it was quick.

That is, if you can call something quick when it’s more than a week late.

On Thursday, seven days after the budget was due, the House finally passed a spending plan with bipartisan support. On Friday, the Senate followed suit.

But this isn’t a reason to celebrate. This is the sub-basement of responsibility as far as the state government is concerned.

Let’s pretend that the lawmakers and executive branch are schoolchildren. Based on the playground brawl behavior they sometimes exhibit, that shouldn’t be hard.

If we were parents of these kids, their report cards wouldn’t merit a “My Honor Student Goes to the State Government” bumper sticker. The best we could hope for would be a participation trophy.

We should not be excited that this year’s highly predictable budget battle delayed the work of the government by only a week. As a state of people who must pay our bills on time or face the consequences of shut-off power, disconnected phone, foreclosed houses or hungry kids, we should be irate that once again our leaders have failed in the one task they absolutely must do every year.

We should be just as angry that they have had no problem fitting in a limitless supply of political posturing. There always seems to be time to stage a fight with the other side — or sometimes even with different factions within the same party.

Pennsylvania is the cradle of American democracy. It is the nursery where the unique form of government we call our own was born with the Declaration of Independence and baptized with the U.S. Constitution. Pennsylvania has been a consistent leader on the national stage. Where the state leads, the country often follows.

And so it is demoralizing to measure the success of this basic task not by how well it is done but by how much or how little it failed.

Yes, Harrisburg, you managed not to drag the budget process out to the point where school districts had to take out tax anticipation loans and libraries had to decide what days they would close because they couldn’t keep the doors open. Bravo. Here’s your trophy.

Maybe next year there could be a budget that comes on time. But history tells us we are more likely to see another schoolyard tantrum instead.