Current Budget Talks Center On Whether To Use Financial Surplus
(Harrisburg, PA) -- Lawmakers in Harrisburg are centering some of their budget discussions for the next fiscal year on whether to use part of a large financial surplus. A 2023 audit report shows roughly 14-billion-dollars in financial reserves has been built up over the past four years. Governor Josh Shapiro has called for a more than three-billion-dollar budget spending increase next year. That would include more than a billion for education spending. Shapiro said in his budget address in February that he would rather invest a chunk of the surplus in helping people and to grow the economy than for the money to sit in a bank account at the Capitol.