Saving for a Rainy Day

Back on May 6th, I speculated as to what Secretary of Education Arne Duncan would think of the Pennsylvania Senate proposal to use the federal stimulus money to balance the state budget, instead of funding the state education shortfall, as proposed by Governor Rendell.

Well, as it turns out, not much.  Since this was not widely reported, I offer the following as a public service: "I was disappointed to see that instead of tapping into the state's rainy-day fund, the Pennsylvania Senate recently chose to reduce the percentage of the overall budget being spent on education". He continued: "to cut the state appropriation for primary education by $728 million while leaving $750 million in the rainy-day surplus is a disservice to our children."

It should be noted that this has just about eliminated the possibility that Pennsylvania will receive any money from the second round of stimulus funding (which is, in large part, contingent on how the first round was spent.)

If you're not going to use the rainy-day fund when it's raining, when do you use it?