The budget props up big tech at the expense of hardworking Pennsylvanians

PENNSYLVANIA – Today, Pennsylvania Stands Up responds to the passage of the state budget with a clear message: this budget doesn’t address the reality of the affordability crisis facing poor and working families across our Commonwealth. 

While Big Tech and Data Center developers drive up utility bills and clear-cut our land to expand their profits, Pennsylvania families are left to foot the bill. Yet companies like Meta and Amazon continue to pay $0 in state taxes on digital revenue – revenue generated by profiting from our data, our communities, and our lives. 

Instead of promoting economic growth, the minimum wage remains frozen at $7.25 an hour, tied for the lowest in the nation, and this budget offers an estimated $2,000,000,000 in tax breaks to developers building these data centers on cleared land. 

This budget arrives at the worst possible moment as the federal government has slashed the lifeline programs many Pennsylvanian families depend on to make ends meet. Our state legislators had an opportunity to step up and secure the resources we need, and they didn’t. An estimated 160,000 Pennsylvanians were forced to drop their Pennie Health insurance due to rising costs, while another 236,000 people lost their SNAP benefits. Families are going without food, without prescriptions they depend on, and without the ability to visit a doctor.

We know what the solution looks like:

The Tax Billionaires, Fund PA package is a proactive revenue agenda that would raise nearly $6 billion in new revenue by closing corporate tax loopholes, taxing billionaires’ unearned income, and requiring Big Tech to pay taxes on the digital ads that profit off Pennsylvania’s consumers and their data. If Big Tech wants access to Pennsylvania’s people, it can pay its fair share of taxes as the rest of us do.

The budget that was passed last week was a missed opportunity. But Pennsylvania Stands Up will not stop fighting until we have a state budget that works for all of us, not just the billionaires and corporate elites. 

Everyone deserves the freedom to thrive, and Pennsylvania Stands Up is building a better future for all Pennsylvanians.  

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