Editorials from around Pennsylvania

Editorials from around Pennsylvania:

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OBAMA SHOULDN’T BLOCK REPEAL OF MEDICAL DEVICES TAX, June 17

The federal medical devices tax - a 2.3 percent levy on the gross receipts of manufacturers of joint replacements, pacemakers, implants and the like - is a revenue booster for the Affordable Care Act. It’s expected to bring in $26 billion over 10 years, to help low-income people obtain health-care policies.

Yet this tax is having a depressing effect on a sector of the economy that until recently was doing well - creating jobs, leading global innovation, boosting exports. Assuming Congress can agree on a way to offset at least some of the revenue loss, it should repeal this tax and allow this part of the manufacturing landscape to continue to grow.

If only it were that easy.

The U.S. House has voted three times to repeal the tax, only to run into Senate indifference. This week the House is poised again to give its blessing. The difference is that a bipartisan coalition in the Senate has the votes for repeal as well.

The White House greeted this prospect with a cold compress Monday. President Obama, after saying he’d take a new look at the issue earlier this year, threatened a veto if a bill reaches his desk. Repeal “would increase the deficit to finance a permanent and costly tax break for industry without improving the health system or helping middle-class Americans,” the administration said in a statement.

Fair enough. Avoiding a tax break that drives up the deficit should need no explanation - but an average of $2.6 billion a year in revenue may be a big price to pay if it dampens the type of innovation the medical devices sector represents, along with 75,000 jobs.

Several businesses in the Lehigh Valley are affected by the tax, including B. Braun, Orasure Technologies, Olympus and Boas Surgical.

In testimony before a Senate subcommittee in April, B. Braun Chief Financial Bruce Heugel said his company recently cut 200 jobs, but more importantly slashed funding for research and development, clinical trials and expansion of product lines. His testimony countered earlier reports that the industry could absorb the tax without major impacts on jobs and business expansion.

The rationale for the tax was that manufacturers would benefit from the growth in insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act, so they should give something back. That wasn’t unreasonable, but the tax is creating disincentives for companies looking to stay competitive. Some are shedding jobs, limiting R&D, freezing hiring and wages. Some are looking to relocate overseas.

Passing a repeal bill is doable, finally. In our region, Sens. Pat Toomey and Bob Casey, and Reps. Charlie Dent, Leonard Lance and Matt Cartwright, have expressed support.

Congress should repeal this tax and include some deficit-plugging help in the process. The president should sign it. Allowing the development of medical technology in the U.S. to stagnate isn’t going to help pay the government’s bills.

- The (Easton) Express-Times

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A SENSIBLE WAY FORWARD ON SCHOOL FUNDING IN PENNSYLVANIA, June 21

That sound you heard Thursday across Pennsylvania was a collective “phew” from school administrators who have been setting their budgets in the dark for far too long.

For years, they have been unable to predict just how much money they could count on getting from the state.

The school-funding process lacks “consistency, predictability, sustainability, adequacy and fairness,” wrote former Solanco School District Superintendent Martin Hudacs in an LNP op-ed in March.

Now, however, there’s hope in sight, and for that, we laud the bipartisan, 15-member Basic Education Funding Commission.

Of those 15 members, three came out of Lancaster County: Republican state Sen. Lloyd Smucker, Democratic state Rep. Mike Sturla and Education Secretary Pedro Rivera - a very strong showing indeed.

The proposed formula would award funding based on a district’s number of students. It gives funding boosts for poverty (measured both by severity and concentration in a school), students with limited proficiency in English, and a district’s charter school enrollment.

The formula also takes into account each district’s ability to raise local tax revenues, a district’s median household income, and the difficulty of realizing economies of scale in sparsely populated rural districts.

It’s a sound and transparent formula, and we hope the General Assembly passes it as part of the budget process this summer.

Smucker expects to have the formula written into a bill by Monday. He believes the Senate Education Committee could consider his legislation as soon as Wednesday.

It helps that he’s the chairman of that committee.

In a meeting Thursday with the LNP Editorial Board, Smucker and Sturla said they expected the path for the new funding formula to be just as smooth in the state House.

There may be some disagreement over just when it should be implemented - Smucker believes that all new money for schools in the next state budget should be allocated according to the new formula.

Sturla said Gov. Tom Wolf wants first to restore school-funding levels to where they were in 2010.

For now at least, we’re just pleased that lawmakers from both sides of the aisle came together to write this badly needed school-funding formula.

Affluent districts have been able to weather the budgeting uncertainty by simply drawing more from their richer tax bases. But this has left Pennsylvania with the worst school-funding disparities in the nation.

According to The Washington Post, per-pupil spending in Pennsylvania’s poorest districts is 33 percent lower than in the wealthiest ones.

As Smucker points out, the funding gap has led to an achievement gap.

No one wants to force the wealthier districts to spend less if their taxpayers are happy to provide local revenues, Sturla says. Rather, the goal is to “raise the bottom up.”

This seems to be the right approach.

We also think the commission’s recommendation that new school funding not be subject to a provision known as “hold harmless” is sensible.

Under “hold harmless,” no school district gets less than it did the year before.

School superintendents here, whose growing districts stand to get more funding under the proposed formula, want to see the “hold harmless” provision eliminated. The commission acknowledges there might need to be a transitional period, so that districts with falling student numbers have time to adjust to their new reality.

The important thing is that this proposed formula, over time, will make our school-funding system much fairer.

The Basic Education Funding Commission also included in its report a list of recommendations for the General Assembly. Among other things, the commission would like lawmakers to create incentives to encourage school districts to consolidate (500 districts is just too many).

We found the recommendations compelling, and urge you to read the commission’s full report online.

And urge your lawmakers to adopt the proposed school-funding formula, not just for the sake of your school superintendent’s sanity, but for the children - all children - of the commonwealth.

- Lancaster Online

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HOW RUSSIA COULD BECOME A U.S. ALLY, June 21

As the Kremlin stokes the conflict in Ukraine and ratchets up tensions with NATO, there’s lots of talk about a Cold War redux.

So it was fascinating to hear Mikhail Khodorkovsky - the billionaire oil magnate whom Russian President Vladimir Putin imprisoned for a decade - describe a Russia that could be a democratic ally of America and Europe 10 or 20 years from now.

“Sooner or later, the system will collapse,” Khodorkovsky told the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington last week, adding, “After Putin, the situation will change.”

Freed by Putin just before the Sochi Olympics and now living in exile in Switzerland, the 51-year-old dissident urged Western nations to prepare for that future. “The West must establish close relations with the European-oriented part of Russia and (plan for) rapid reintegration into the global system after the regime changes,” he warned, because “we’re not going to have a big window of opportunity.”

With Putin firmly ensconced in power and cracking down on any opposition, this does sound like a pipe dream. The ease with which Putin restored authoritarian rule and the huge domestic support for his seizure of Crimea seem to offer scant hope for a democratic Russia. Yet there is good reason to ponder Khodorkovsky’s advice.

For one thing, the former magnate’s own biography puts him in a unique position to raise these issues. Khodorkovsky was one of the so-called oligarchs who bought chunks of Russia’s natural resources for a song during the wild 1990s, when Russia was making the transition from communism to capitalism. Khodorkovsky’s early reputation was not too savory; when I interviewed him at the World Economic Forum more than a dozen years ago, he seemed hard and cold.

But unlike other oligarchs, Khodorkovsky transformed his oil company, Yukos, into a giant ready to play by international standards and rules. He also contributed funds to Russian opposition groups, which is why the Kremlin trumped up tax-evasion charges against him, seized his company, and sent him to Siberia.

Now, in exile, he funds the Open Russia Foundation, which helps struggling Russian civil-society groups.

Khodorkovsky unofficially represents the urban, educated Russians who demonstrated by the tens of thousands in Moscow and other cities in 2012, calling for a more open and less corrupt political system. They are the main hope for Russia’s future, even though they don’t yet have a leader. (It’s not clear whether Khodorkovsky seeks that role.)

Moreover, as Khodorkovsky points out, the Russian population is geographically oriented toward Europe. Although the vast Russian landmass lies mostly in Asia, “out of 140 million (people), 120 million live in the European part,” he said. “And that part is increasing. After people figure that out, the question of whether Russia is or isn’t a European country won’t exist.”

Indeed, it is bizarre that the Russian economy is still so dependent on oil, gas, and other natural resources, many of which have been renationalized and are run in an opaque, third-world fashion, with large sums reportedly siphoned off to serve the political interests of Kremlin cronies.

With its educated population, rich in engineering and other technical skills, post-Soviet Russia should be leading the way in high-tech innovation, on par with Europe and the United States. Instead, mafia-style corruption and heavy-handed government regulations thwart such development.

Rather than catching up with the West, Putin relies on energy income as if he were an oil despot in a developing country. And his much-touted turn to Asia depends heavily on disadvantageous energy deals with China, which threaten to put Russia in thrall to Beijing.

At some point Putin’s economic mismanagement may boomerang.

Khodorkovsky said the current confrontation between Russia and the West is “absolutely artificial,” promoted by Putin and Russian elites to help them hold on to power.

“They desperately need an enemy which will distract the populace from all the corruption,” he said, “and inflaming them (against the West) is the only effective mechanism for the survival of the regime.” That’s why he believes there is no hope that Putin will abide by any strategic agreement with the West on Ukraine.

Meantime, the Russian president has been able to convince his own people that the West is a huge threat to Russia. The Kremlin maintains near-total control of national electronic and print media, which tell the Russian people the war in Ukraine is all America’s fault.

Khodorkovsky does not say how he thinks a post-Putin reality could evolve. (Some Russian analysts believe it can happen only after Putin dies.) But he makes a couple of essential points.

First, many Russians actually want what democracy offers, even though they reject the concept. They associate democracy with the economic disaster caused by the failed transitional period of the 1990s, after the Soviet Union collapsed. But if you ask them whether they want an independent judiciary, fair local elections, and other elements of democratic life, they will say yes.

Second, the Russian dissident insists that countries can change their political culture and that Russians are not doomed by their history to despotism. Germany, he points out, became a democracy, albeit under Allied occupation.

Third, U.S. and European officials should think now about how to integrate a post-Putin Russia no matter how far off it is. “In the end, this will entail accession to NATO and the European Union,” he argued.

Of course, repeated efforts after 1991 to link Russia to the European Union and NATO failed, for reasons far more complex than the eastward expansion of NATO. It’s not clear what formula would work in the future.

Yet Khodorkovsky is correct to prod U.S. and European leaders to exercise more imagination, and not to give up on future generations of Russians. As Putin tries to provoke fears of a new Cold War, it’s not too soon for them to start brainstorming about what now seems inconceivable: a Russia in tune with the West.

- The Philadelphia Inquirer

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POPE’S CALL NOT HOT AIR, June 24

Many critics of Pope Francis’ stirring encyclical on the environment protested that he is not a scientist, which is true but beside the point. His call for a global cultural revolution to foster sound environmental stewardship is a moral framework for the climate change debate and, more broadly, a demand that technology be used to improve the human condition.

The encyclical embraces the overwhelming consensus among climate scientists that adverse climate change is partially driven by human activity. But the pope deals with the societal structure that allows it to continue, noting that the most catastrophic impacts likely will be upon some of the world’s poorest people.

Science cannot address every dimension of every problem. The question often is not whether technology can do something, but whether it should do something. That is the dimension that Pope Francis brings to the debate, lauding the improvements that science has brought to human life while lamenting that its benefits often are restricted to the wealthiest at the expense of the poor.

“Nobody is suggesting a return to the Stone Age, but we do need to slow down and look at reality in a different way, to appropriate the positive and sustainable progress which has been made, but also to recover the values and the great goals swept away by our unrestrained delusions of grandeur,” Francis wrote.

Many conservatives believe that the pope should not have taken on the subject. GOP presidential aspirant Jeb Bush, for example, said “I don’t think we should politicize our faith” - an odd comment from a leader of a party that has used faith as a cudgel relative to public policy.

The encyclical is an important and intentionally timely contribution to the debate, in that it precedes a climate change global conference to be conducted in Paris later this year. And it will influence domestic policies under debate in many countries around the warming planet.

By making environmental stewardship a moral prerogative, Pope Francis has stirred the consciences not just of Catholics, but of humanity.

- The Pottsville Republican-Herald

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PROGRESS ON DISABILITY FRONT, June 22

The new administration in Harrisburg is building momentum in an effort to reverse some of the severe cuts in social programs that occurred under former Gov. Tom Corbett.

Gov. Tom Wolf’s proposed budget calls for a 6 percent raise in social services spending to help offset the effects of a 10 percent reduction in funding that started in fiscal 2013 under Corbett. As budget discussions continue ahead of a June 30 deadline, legislators in both parties are supporting expanded programs for people with disabilities.

The Senate, for instance, is considering a bill sponsored by Republican Sen. Lisa Baker that would tap into $10.5 million in federal funding to help teens and young adults with disabilities find useful employment. Similar legislation is making headway in the House.

“We want to have people as taxpayers rather than as tax recipients,” Donald Broderick, executive director of the ARC of Northeastern Pennsylvania, said at a Capitol rally last week urging increased support for people with disabilities.

The assistance could make a big difference. People with disabilities would rather be productive, taxpaying workers than recipients of benefits.

Bipartisan legislation also moved forward in the House last week that would allow families to establish tax-free savings accounts for the long-term care of disabled relatives. The Achieving a Better Life Experience Act, which was sponsored federally by U.S. Sen. Bob Casey and was signed into law in December, cleared the way for states to begin offering such programs.

Progress on fronts advancing the interests of people with disabilities reverses a course Pennsylvania pursued under the last administration.

To paraphrase Gandhi, a state’s greatness reflects how it treats its weakest members.

- The Citizens’ Voice