Common Sense Weekly

Welcome to Common Sense Weekly! This is the Commonwealth Foundation's weekly news roundup of policy issues being debated in Harrisburg and across Pennsylvania.



Josh Shapiro Plays to the Middle While Pleasing the Left

Perhaps you’ve heard: Our governor is a moderate president-in-the-making.

Josh Shapiro is leaning into this image as the state legislature negotiates next year’s budget, indicating that he supports a school-choice scholarship program for low-income students — a popular policy across the political aisle. But he’s so far shown that appearing moderate is more important than passing moderate policies.

Gov. Shapiro now faces a choice. He can either fail to pass the scholarships before the June 30 budget deadline, perhaps permanently tarnishing his moderate image, or he can show the kind of leadership he promised but has yet to deliver.

The governor’s political calculus is clear. He leads a swing state, perhaps the most important swing state in America. His best shot at higher office will come in 2028. Before that, he must win re-election in 2026.

Surviving that long requires keeping the political middle happy without simultaneously angering progressives. That’s a hard line to walk, but he has already shown how he prefers to navigate it. The short version: Look in a moderate direction while moving to the left.



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Pennsylvania Vouchers From Milton Friedman to Jay-Z

As the Pennsylvania Legislature hurries to wrap up its budget before a June 30 deadline, the battle for school choice has resumed. But this is not your father’s voucher fight. Those lining up behind the push for choice include several dozen black pastors along with the famous rappers Jay-Z and Meek Mill.

This month Jay-Z’s entertainment company Roc Nation announced it is supporting the campaign for school choice in the Keystone State. Roc Nation says “we are supporters of the public school system,” but that opposing vouchers is in effect “telling Pennsylvania’s most vulnerable students that they must remain captive to a system that is not working for them.”

Milton Friedman couldn’t have put it better when he proposed vouchers more than a half century ago. Roc Nation then spells out the ugly educational results in Pennsylvania:

“According to the 2023 Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA), roughly 75 percent of eighth-grade students in the Pennsylvania public school system aren’t proficient in math while 47 percent aren’t proficient in language arts. Furthermore, in the bottom 15 percent of the state’s public schools, the data reveals that less than 10 percent of students are proficient in math, and only 25 percent are proficient in English. In 40 schools across the state, there were no students—absolutely none—that met the grade-level proficiency criteria in math.”



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New EPA Rule Is a Death Sentence for American Energy

The Environmental Protection Agency

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plays judge, jury, and executioner—and its newest-issued rule is a death sentence to American energy and energy-producing states.

Meanwhile, states like Pennsylvania, which will be disproportionately harmed by the rule because of our abundant natural gas production, hold the key to America’s increasing energy needs, generating immense economic development and reducing the very emissions targeted by this heavy-handed agency.

The EPA unilaterally issued

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a final rule establishing draconian emission standards that target existing coal and new natural gas power plants nationwide. It requires 90% carbon capture for power-generating facilities by 2032.

Aside from its questionable legality, the new rule is unfeasible. The EPA proposed impossible standards. Current carbon-capture technology—a water- and energy-intensive process

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that filters and sequesters emissions—neither meets this standard nor projects to do so in the next decade.



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PA Senate Dem Smears Educational Freedom Supporters

A Pennsylvania Senate Democrat launched a tirade against school choice supporters at an education rally

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this week, accusing them of wanting to “drive straight, White, able-bodied kids into private religious schools."

Sen. Lindsey Williams (D-Allegheny)

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, minority chair of the Senate Education Committee, accused voucher supporters of sharing the goals of the so-called Christian Nationalism movement: having “a country that favors evangelical Christian beliefs over all other beliefs.”

She also claimed public school spending was falling due to choice initiatives.

In fact, per pupil spending in Pennsylvania public schools has risen, even as choice opportunities have expanded. But Williams told a Harrisburg crowd that parental education choice was the enemy of public schools.



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Teachers unions are fighting tooth and nail to keep kids trapped in failing schools in Pennsylvania—especially during the ongoing budget fight in Harrisburg. Check out our latest podcast, Disunion: The Government Union Report to see how public-sector unions like these are holding Pennsylvania back. Listen here.

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