There is no bottom to the Republicans depravity. Vote accordingly.

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Taxpayer money doesn't have a party affiliation.

Cutler keeps trying to reframe it as money "raised" by Republicans for Republican use since it was collected while Republicans were in office.

It's PA taxpayer money that existed in those accounts to do the business of the legislature. It's theft. Imagine if an outgoing president transferred all the taxpayer money to fund the operations of the white house and executive offices to their own accounts and those of their political party!

Clearly they did not...

As a family values oriented fiscal conservative, I sure hope this Cutler fellow returns these slush funds to the taxpayers. But, he and his cronies will probably spend it on hookers and blow.

Pretty sure that's a lot of what got Iran pissed at the US in the first place.

Edit - right, we helped install the Shah.

Not only is Cutler a crybaby, he's now a thief, too??

Iran was pissed at the Shah, and then at the US because it gave them the Shah.

I thought we took in the Shah along with their national Treasury. Or at least a sizable portion of it.

Edit - nevermind, forgot we put the Shaw in place.

Does this mean we're getting to a point where parties will refuse to settle cashflows into state coffers, but act like fiduciaries for the money until the acting reps & administrators want to allocate / purpose it?

i'm not even sure that could work. I'm trying to liken it to how other countries have many parties in the governing body, and each has to barter to get things funded/etc. Same in this model — each of 'the two parties' is really a network of PACs and NGOs, with their own access to donations/financials.

Today those groups are already deciding where to allocate based on trust / alliances. Are we headed toward a model where they more like fiduciaries, trusting a lesser amount of political hierarchy?

(all of this is aside from what Cutler did, should do, or consequences)

please, analysis only. No partisan trope responses.

Every republican accusation is an admission.

I mean ... PA Dems will have a House majority for the first time in over a decade, so they kinda did??

Stupid man does crime.

Stupid people look the other way.

Hopefully he gets prosicuted.

These clowns have 50 million slush funds of our money? Fuck them.

And you'll keep voting their party after they do

I'm having trouble making sense of a lot of this recent drama the Pa House, since most of the public has little knowledge of the normal internal processes and procedures of the legislature. I have no idea what is normal business in the state house, and what isn't.

This is all further complicated by the fact that the GOP will technically continue to hold the majority until special election are held to fill Democratic vacancies.

> It's PA taxpayer money that existed in those accounts to do the business of the legislature. It's theft. Imagine if an outgoing president transferred all the taxpayer money to fund the operations of the white house and executive offices to their own accounts and those of their political party!

It's worth noting that none of these transfers are leaving accounts internal to the structure of the state legislature.

Fight for control of Pa. House rages on as Republicans move $51 million in state funds >In the Pennsylvania House, the caucuses of both parties are allocated separate funds to be used for things like payroll, office costs and more.  > >In 2022, “Caucus Operations” for both parties were allocated a total of $140,044,000. According to Cutler, this total is usually divided into 52% for the majority party and 48% for the minority party, which would mean Republicans got about $72,822,880 and Democrats got about $67,221,120. > >Cutler said Republicans have allocated some of their funds into various accounts that benefit both parties, such as an account used to pay for technology upgrades in the Capitol. For example, it was used to pay to upgrade the House chamber voting board last summer. Republican leadership said they planned future projects like upgrading the Capitol media office, which still has an entrance sign reading “Newspaper correspondents” and only has a men’s bathroom. > >Funds from the information technology accounts made up most of the $51 million transfer to the Republican House Special Leadership account. Republicans said because the money was allocated to and saved by the Republican Caucus, they should get to keep control of it. > >“It’s essentially 12 years’ worth of surpluses that have accumulated because we’ve managed our finances very responsibly,” Cutler said.

>“It’s essentially 12 years’ worth of surpluses that have accumulated because we’ve managed our finances very responsibly,” Cutler said.

Grand theft auto is essentially aggressive valet parking.

But due to the Democrats not having official control for a few weeks/months into the new season, Cutler is almost certain to be elected speaker on the 3rd and the GOP will use their short term majority to ram through the amendment package onto the May primary ballot.

• Abortion ban.
• End of no excuse mail voting.
• End statewide elections for the supreme court, and have them elected via politically drawn districts. Read: gerrymandered.

So if this was money budgeted for them, and they had a bunch of extra money, then the party of spending less and cutting taxes shouldve budgeted less for themselves and passed a tax cuts. That is, unless they are a bunch of hypocrites.

Trash can only be trash. Take it out.

Is this actually standard procedure? Has this been done before when party control switched? More what I find surprising is that taxpayer money is even subject to partisan control.

That's a legitimately good question.

It may have happened in the past, but unfortunately it's been a while since PAs had a swap of control so it would have been a while ago. No matter, it's wrong.

Because as you and someone else pointed out, taxpayer money doesn't have a party affiliation.

Prediction: The Senate won't pass that because they can't override the inevitable veto from Wolf. It has pass the legislature, which means not merely the House. there is still time for the GOP controlled legislature to do this, apparently. It does not ever see the governor's desk.

Small good news is Cutler will not be speaker in '23. He will be a minority whip.

Lets not do this holier than thou dance. The only reason Pennsylvania is affordable is due to the republican parties management of funds. Every where else,including Philadelphia, in the northeast has democrat hands in the coughers and no one knows what's going on with the money. High homelessness, sanctuary cities, embezzlement, nothing gets dork because it has to pass too many hands first

Fifty. Million. Dollars. Is a lotta money.

Just another sick move. Plant an anonymous tip with the FBI and watch.

The US held onto certain Iranian assets as the result of the Hostage situation. We did not take in their national treasury.

Governor has no say whatsoever in the amendment process. That's the entire reason why the state GOP has been machine gunning amendments the last few years is because they can't override a veto. So instead, they package unpopular legislation as amendments specifically because it cuts out the governor's office.

They abused this process to strip the governor's emergency powers, and now they're working on abortion, mail in voting, and gerrymandering the state supreme court. Dave Argall, chairman of the Senate government committee, had also made it clear that the GOP intends to use constitutional amendments to skirt around the governor and ban property taxes.

If the GOP holds a majority in both houses for even a slight bit of time during the upcoming session, they will push the amendment package through. All they need to do is have it pass both the house and senate one more time and then they can put it on a statewide vote. They want this on the May primary ballot because it's the most advantageous for them.

Republicans... the party of criminals.

If they can't lie, cheat or steal - they can't win.

“Unless” is doing quite a lot of heavy lifting there

Dang, I didn't realize the Amendment process was that convoluted. Welp, we better not let up, then. Time to harangue, now more than ever.

None of what you posted is factual or makes sense in any sort of way.

And the extra pisser about the process?

It only requires 50%+1 vote during each step. Compare that to amending the US Constitution: 66% of both the House and Senate, and then 75% of the states. It's amazingly simple to amend Pennsylvania's constitution, especially so when you have an artificially created majority that isn't representative of the actual people who live in this state.

Crybully*

That's what it was. Thank you for the correction.

I hope the next headline I read regarding this issue is a lawsuit filed against this thief.

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And banning property taxes are bad because?

Some good news, I guess, care of Stephen Caruso.

Holy shit, that's one spicy meatball!

This was partly due to poor strategy on the Democrats' part. Austin Davis and Summer Lee simultaneously ran for higher office and the state house, won both, and now have to vacate their seat in the state house. If they had chosen just one office to run for, the House would have been 101-101 at this point.

However, I still question the ability of Republicans to pass their amendments. They cannot afford any defections, assuming that all 99 Democrats stay united, and I think there may be a few Republicans in the Philly suburbs who are unwilling to support these amendments.

Gotta love when election denialism causes the system to deny the certification of people who ran on or friendly to the idea of denying the results elections.

F*cking golden.