Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, along with other governors, will be sending their representatives to Washington D.C. to try get bailout money just for their state budgets. Pennsylvania is headed for billions of lost tax revenue.
The money states ask for does not even begin to cover for the local governments lost tax revenue.
With a budget deficit that Gov. Tom Wolf has warned could approach $5 billion, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say the state is going to need help from Washington to balance its books.
Wolf on Wednesday wrote to President Donald Trump calling for the federal government to provide additional aid to Pennsylvania and other states straining with massive budget deficits caused by lost tax revenue from business shutdowns intended to slow the spread of coronavirus.
“In Pennsylvania, we are projecting a budget deficit ranging between $4.5 billion and $5 billion,” Wolf wrote in a jointly signed letter with fellow Democratic governors Tony Evers, of Wisconsin, and Gretchen Whitmer, of Michigan.
“That deficit will make it incredibly difficult to focus our efforts on supporting workers and businesses as we move past the COVID-19 pandemic and attempt to rebuild our economy for Pennsylvania’s middle class.”
Retail sales plunged 8.7 percent in March, the biggest decline since the government started tracking in 1992, the U.S. Commerce Department announced Wednesday. Pennsylvania’s business shutdown has resulted in 1.46 million first-time unemployment claims, according to the Department of Labor and Industry.
Source: New Castle News
