Gov. Rendell Proposes Firing 24,000 Pennsylvania Workers

Governor Rendell announced today that to satisfy his appetite for more spending, he would like to increase Pennsylvania’s Personal Income Tax (PIT) by 0.5 percentage points – to 3.57%.

As we announced yesterday, a PIT increase would cost thousands of Pennsylvania jobs.

Our updated analysis reveals that Rendell’s latest proposed increase would cost 24,000 Pennsylvanians their jobs. This is on top of those jobs already lost during the current recession.

Not only is that bad economic policy, it’s just plain old “mean” and “heartless”.

One more note: Governor Rendell again blames “Wall Street Greed” for his troubles and forcing him to raise income taxes (for the 2nd time as Governor). Sure, Wall Street bankers are “greedy”, but Rendell should also mention that the financial crisis was a failure of government, which fueled and encouraged unwise behavior by financial institutions; he should acknowledge the failure of his tax, borrow and spend policies to grow the economy; he should mention that at both the federal and state levels we had increasing government control of the economy, not free markets; and he should note failure of the so-called stimulus (which he lobbied for) to stimulate.

So what is his solution? More of the same failed economic policies of the past.