Welcome to Common Sense Weekly! This is the Commonwealth Foundation's weekly news roundup of policy issues being debated in Harrisburg and across Pennsylvania.
Fracking could decide the election in Pennsylvania — and nationwide
Pennsylvania may be the deciding state in the 2024 election. And new polling from my organization makes clear energy may be the deciding issue for Pennsylvania voters.
Energy matters more to Pennsylvania — where polling shows Donald Trump and Kamala Harris tied — than almost any other state.
We’re the second-largest producer of natural gas, with 2022 production totaling a staggering 7.5 trillion cubic feet.
Likewise, Pennsylvania is the No. 1 state for exporting electricity — powering our neighbors like New York.
It’s Not Just Fracking — Pennsylvanians Oppose Harris’s Climate Policies
Fracking haunts Vice President Kamala Harris. Her flip-flop — advocating a federal ban on fracking in 2019 only to recant it in 2024 — has enraged many in Pennsylvania, a critical swing state that relies heavily on its energy sector.
But recent polling by the Commonwealth Foundation shows that most Pennsylvanians object to not only a fracking ban but also most heavy-handed environmental policies — many of which the vice president embraces. Harris’s revised fracking stance reflects a broader emphasis that pushes overregulation and climate alarmism rather than reliability and cost.
Josh Shapiro Gets a "D" Grade
However, Shapiro has favored some tax hikes. He supports cap-and-trade plans to raise hundreds of millions of dollars a year from utilities. In 2024, he proposed capping carbon emissions and using about three-quarters of the money raised to recycle back to electricity consumers in a progressive manner, with the rest spent on green energy programs.
In his 2024 state of the state address, Shapiro said that his budget did not call for raising taxes. That is not entirely correct, as he proposed a new tax on electronic gaming machines to raise $150 million a year. He also called for legalizing recreational marijuana and imposing a 20 percent tax on the wholesale price, which would raise about $200 million a year. These tax increases were not passed this year.
The general fund budget rose by 9 percent in 2024, and Shapiro proposed an 8 percent increase for 2025. The state Senate—controlled by Republicans—has been at odds with Shapiro regarding the budget surplus. In 2024, the Senate passed a bill to reduce the individual income tax rate and cut utility taxes, but Shapiro favored using surpluses to increase spending.
Three Mile Island Demonstrates the Value of Free Markets
In a political environment that increasingly pretends government-imposed fixes are the best answers to everyday problems, it sometimes feels like a rare moment when we can celebrate the problem-solving dynamism of the marketplace.
Three Mile Island – specifically, the new 20-year agreement between Constellation and Microsoft to fire up the decades-old reactor and provide urgently needed baseload power to the electrical grid – is such a moment. This deal represents a genuine market-driven solution to a broader economic challenge: satisfying our unquenchable thirst for electricity.
Too many lawmakers propose government intervention to meet this need. Proposals traditionally use the carrot-or-stick approach: Politicians dangle tax breaks and subsidies (the carrot) to attract the businesses they like and penalize the ones they don’t with increased taxes and regulations (the stick).
The kids are not all right
Our children’s test scores are down. They haven’t even reached pre-Covid levels, which wasn’t anything to brag about then. And the students are more anxious than ever.
Pick your benchmark. Pick your trend line. Pick your anecdote. Our kids are in trouble, and so our nation’s future is in trouble. In our public schools, politics, political agendas, DEI, and virtue-signaling are now front and center — and those cultural battles are masking even greater academic and emotional development problems.
Maybe the emphasis on politics, gender, race, virtue-signaling — and the “everybody gets a trophy” philosophy — has actually caused the academic problems. At a minimum, school boards and teachers unions putting those culture battles at the forefront have taken money and attention away from falling grades — and, perhaps, have caused rising student anxiety.
See why bailing out SEPTA with taxpayer dollars is a SCARY policy here!
