Southeastern PA Budget Coalition protests budget (cuts)
by Rajiv Venkataramanan on Jul 01 2010
If legislators in Harrisburg expect to come home to an electorate satisfied with a passed budget, they are going to be in for a surprise. Thursday afternoon, the Southeastern PA Budget Coalition, a motley group of social service providers, unions, community organizations, and advocacy groups, staged a rally outside Philadelphia's City Hall to protest the various cuts the state budget entails.
Passions ran high as the group of around 400 people, armed with bull horns and signs, chanted and testified about what they thought was unjust about the state. budget. Katie Sipp, Executive VP of SEIU Health Care PA, declared that "budgets are political documents," and that this state budget reflected the political priorities of Harrisburg legislators. She went on to say that the budget serves "corporate greed, but not the peoples' need."
This was the overarching theme of those who spoke: that the legislature did little, if anything, to make corporations pay their fair share of taxes and instead slashed programs critical to the lives of vulnerable populations in PA. One after another, spokespersons from various groups expressed shock at how Harrisburg politicians
