Proposed Pa. budget deal has state lawmakers preparing to return to Harrisburg

Ford Turner, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Nov 11, 2025

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Months of closed-door negotiations have produced at least a tentative agreement surrounding a long-overdue 2025-26 state budget, and there were indications Tuesday that votes on budget bills might take place this week.

The state House, which previously had not been scheduled to return until Monday, was scheduled to go into voting session on Wednesday morning. Sources said senators were preparing to return to Harrisburg, and Sen. Jarrett Coleman — a Lehigh County Republican who is not in leadership but chairs a committee — said Republicans who control the chamber expect to meet behind closed doors as a caucus Tuesday afternoon.

"I am aware there is a proposed deal," Coleman said. "I have no idea what the word 'deal' means at this point."

The activity comes with the state more than four months into a fiscal year in which the lack of a spending plan has halted the flow of billions of dollars of payments to counties, school districts, human service organizations and other entities.

Across the state, governments and organizations have taken out loans, stopped hiring or frozen their spending. In Westmoreland County alone, more than 100 people have been furloughed.

Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro unveiled his proposed budget in early February. It called for spending $51.5 billion, an increase of more than 7% from expenditures in 2024-25. It also relied on using a $2.9 billion cushion in the General Fund and drawing $1.6 billion from the state's so-called Rainy Day Fund.

Republicans immediately attacked the spending figure and pointed out that it was $5 billion or more above the state's revenue level.

Since then, negotiations have occurred behind closed doors involving Senate Republican leadership, the leadership of the Democrats who run the House, and the Shapiro administration. In public, multiple attempts by lawmakers to approve the central bill of any budget, the General Fund appropriations bill, have failed because each individual attempt could not clear one chamber or the other.

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