Rogers Howard’s primary challenge to state Sen. Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R-9) has reaped a result. The state’s Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program (RACP) will now be called the Pennsylvania Economic Growth Initiative.
Crap by any other name will smell the same, though, as Shakespeare might say if he was a 21st century Pennsylvanian.
Howard consistently pointed out throughout the campaign that the program is basically a huge slush fund that benefits the solons we elected to lead us and their friends.
Howard noted that the RACP started in 1986 with a $400 million debt limit which has been raised five times until it hit $4.05 billion in 2011. He says this means that the politically connected groups and businesses got an average or $150 million per year over the last 27 years.
He said that Rep. Mike Turzai (R-28) has proposed cutting the debt limit to $1.65 billion over 20 years and that Gov. Tom Corbett has countered by proposing to cut the gifts to $125 million which would cut the debt limit to $3.37 billion in 27 years.
How about we just kill the program entirely and stop giving tax dollars to the businesses most adapt at politics?
“The bottom line is that PEGI, or RACP, is totally gratuitous debt piled onto the shoulders of future generations for the purpose of letting current government choose which private sector businesses will be encouraged and subsidized, and which will not,” said Howard. “We have seen the campaign donations of beneficiaries of RCAP and there is no reason to expect that such campaign donations will not continue apace under PEGI.”
It is time for a revolution