Harrisburg, PA – Today, Governor Josh Shapiro delivered remarks as he signed the 2025-26 Budget into law — a balanced budget that cuts taxes for working families, addresses critical workforce needs, makes historic investments in education, and delivers for Pennsylvanians.
See below for Governor Shapiro’s remarks as prepared for delivery:
Thank you all for joining us today.
Speaker McClinton. Leader Bradford. Chairman Harris. Leader Costa. Chairman Hughes.
All the members of the House and Senate here today who have fought every day since June to get a budget on my desk.
Members of my cabinet here today.
This day has been a long time coming.
I proposed my budget 281 days ago.
A budget laser-focused on continuing the progress we made over our first two years of this Administration — on fueling Pennsylvania’s rise by investing in great schools and creating more opportunity for our kids…
By expanding our workforce and growing our economy…
By cutting taxes and reducing costs for Pennsylvanians who work so hard, and so much more.
I would have loved to have stood here with all of you and signed a budget into law on June 30th of this year.
But Pennsylvania is one of just a handful of states with a divided legislature, and it takes a majority of votes in the Republican-led Senate and the Democratic-led House to get a budget to my desk.
It requires all of us to compromise, have tough conversations, and ultimately, find common ground.
I worked hard all summer and fall to get leaders in the General Assembly to come together and hash out their differences.
As the LG said, we stayed at the table, refusing to accept inaction and rejecting short-sighted attempts to cut health care services and slash critical initiatives.
Because my top priority was delivering a budget that makes a meaningful impact on the good people of Pennsylvania.
And today, because we held the line — alongside my colleagues here in the House and Senate – and stayed at the table, and demanded a serious budget that addresses our needs…
…Today I am about to sign into law a budget that delivers for Pennsylvanians and builds on the progress we’ve made so far.
Let me be clear: this is a balanced budget that cuts taxes, makes critical investments, protects 100 percent of the Rainy Day fund, and still leaves us with 8 billion dollars in reserve.
Let me walk you through what it means for the people of Pennsylvania.
This budget builds on the progress we’ve made together to deliver better schools and more opportunity for our kids.
Because every kid deserves the freedom to chart their own course and the opportunity to succeed.
And that opportunity starts in the classroom.
Look at what we’ve done together over the past few years. It’s working.
As a result of the investments we’ve made, 778 schools have been able to expand mental health services and hire counselors because we prioritized student mental health.
We served nearly 93 million breakfasts to Pennsylvania students in the last school year — that's 11 million more than the year I took office.
3,000 more students are enrolled in career and technical education courses.
And we’re putting more teachers in our classrooms and expanding the resources available to our students.
Graduation rates across the Commonwealth are rising.
And Consumer Affairs now ranks us as one of the top states for quality public education in the country.
That’s a hell of a lot of progress we’ve made together.
This budget builds on all of that.
It again increases our investment in basic education and special education.
It continues our commitment to feeding kids a healthy breakfast…
…Offering mental health services in schools…
…And fixing school infrastructure.
And for the third year in a row, this budget also directs more dollars to the schools that need them most through what we call the adequacy formula.
We increased that fund by $565 million dollars this year.
And we finally reformed our cyber charter school system.
If parents want to send their children to a cyber school, that’s fine — but we shouldn’t be overfunding them at the expense of our public schools.
This historic reform will save public schools across Pennsylvania $175 million.
That’s something that leaders here in Harrisburg have been talking about for years.
We got it done.
At the same time, this budget also increases funding for PHEAA grants so more Pennsylvania students can get financial aid and afford to go to college if that’s the path they choose.
And for our youngest students, this budget invests in something known as structured literacy, which puts a renewed emphasis on teaching them to read well — and training our teachers to teach reading effectively.
It also increases funding for Pre-K and Early Intervention programs, allowing us to hire more Pre-K teachers and supporting those kids who need a little extra help.
This budget builds on our progress on workforce development…
Starting by creating a new initiative to give at least $450 in recruitment or retention bonuses to child care workers all across the Commonwealth.
There are 3,000 vacancies in child care centers here in Pennsylvania. We’re doing something about that and getting more child care workers into our classrooms.
This budget also strengthens our teacher pipeline by increasing our investment in student teacher stipends.
As a result of last year’s investment of $20 million, we were able to pay stipends to 2,000 student teachers.
This year, we’re delivering $30 million to ensure student teachers get paid for their hard work.
That’s another 1,000 student teachers who will get paid for their work.
This budget also doubles down on the work we’ve done to increase wages for direct care workers who take care of our most vulnerable neighbors.
And on top of all of this, we’re continuing to invest in apprenticeships, vo-tech classes, and the hands-on education initiatives we’ve brought back to our schools.
My Administration is once again delivering $183 million funding for career and technical education and apprenticeships — a more than 50 percent increase compared to when I took office.
This budget continues Pennsylvania’s economic rise, cutting taxes for our businesses and investing in sites, in innovation, and in the main streets that form the beating heart of so many communities.
Under my Administration’s leadership, Site Selector Magazine named us the top state in the Northeast for economic competitiveness.
Forbes rated us one of the best states in the country to start a business.
And a Moody’s analysis showed that we have the only economy in the Northeast that is growing.
That’s all because of the work we’ve done to make Pennsylvania more competitive.
This budget continues the investments that have been critical to our resurgence.
We know agriculture is central to our economy, so we’re building on our commitment to our farmers —
By fully funding the PA Farm Bill and providing $10 million to help our farmers adopt the latest technologies through the first Ag Innovation Fund in the nation.
At a time when the federal government is cutting funding for our farmers to feed people, we are strengthening the ties between our farmers and our food banks, providing $11 million more for food security and support for hungry Pennsylvanians.
And when disaster strikes, we will be there, because this budget ensures funding will continue to be available to respond to future Hi-Path Avian Influenza outbreaks.
Tourism is also central to our economy — and next year, the eyes of the world are going to be on us as we celebrate 250 years of American democracy…
…a democracy that was born right here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
We will play host to the NFL Draft, March Madness, the PGA Championship, the FIFA World Cup, the MLB All-Star Game, and even more
Those events will be huge drivers of tourism and economic activity, as millions of people will visit Pennsylvania.
This budget invests 50 million dollars to help make sure we are prepared and safe next year as we welcome the world to the birthplace of democracy.
And for those who aren’t visiting, but for those who make up the fabric of our communities, we’re investing more in our small businesses — funding Main Street Matters and the Historically Disadvantaged Business Program.
It continues our investments in site development, making another $175 million for PA SITES available to help companies create shovel-ready sites to build on and expand here in Pennsylvania.
And it cuts taxes for businesses once again, lowering the Corporate Net Income Tax for the third consecutive year under my leadership.
Back in 2022, when I kicked off my campaign for Governor, the Corporate Net Income Tax was 9.99 percent.
With my signature on this budget, we’ve lowered that to 7.49 percent.
This budget also builds on the work we’ve done to make our government move at the speed of business.
We went from being among the worst in the country for permitting to now being a national model.
We’ve done that with a money back guarantee system for your permits if we don’t issue them on time.
And we’ve eliminated the backlog of permits which used to slow down the system.
Now we’re building on that success.
This budget expands DEP’s SPEED program, codifies parts of our PAyback initiative, and creates a new, public dashboard to track permits.
It makes permanent the speed that my Administration has delivered, and delivers certainty for our business community.
This budget also delivers nearly 16 million additional dollars for more staffing at DEP so we can move even faster and protect Pennsylvania’s constitutional right to clean air and pure water.
But look, we have more work to do to grow our economy — and what we do on energy is a big part of that.
For years, Senate Republicans have used RGGI as an excuse to stall substantive conversations about energy.
Today, that excuse is gone.
It’s time to look forward – and I’m going to be aggressive about pushing for policies that create more jobs in the energy sector, bring more clean energy onto the grid, and reduce the cost of energy for Pennsylvanians.
It’s time to get it done — and I know we can.
Cutting costs on energy is only one part of our agenda to reduce the burdens on Pennsylvania’s families.
Let’s be real, federal policies are driving up people’s costs.
In my first two years, we’ve reduced costs and cut taxes for Pennsylvania seniors, families, and businesses.
Together, we delivered the largest targeted tax cut for seniors in nearly 2 decades — resulting in 522,000 Pennsylvanians getting more than $319 million dollars in rebates last year…
And we tripled the child and dependent care tax credit.
This year, we're cutting taxes again — helping working folks who are struggling to get by.
Under the budget I’m about to sign, we will create a Working Pennsylvanians tax credit that will put about $193 million dollars back in the pockets of hard-working folks trying to take care of themselves and their families next year.
This is something folks in this building have been talking about for years and years.
We got it done.
This tax credit is a percentage of the existing federal Earned Income Tax Credit.
So for instance, a single mom with three kids, who makes less than $61,000 a year, could get up to $805 back on her taxes next year.
Nearly 940,000 Pennsylvanians are going to see more money back in their pockets.
That’s a big deal.
You all know how vocal I’ve been about the Republican budget coming out of D.C. — and how devastating it’s going to be for Pennsylvania.
It will knock half a million people off their health care, close rural hospitals, and more.
In this budget, we resisted efforts to kick people off Medicaid and make the situation even worse.
We’re going to take care of our neighbors who rely on Medicaid.
And at the same time, we secured reforms to help lower our SNAP Error Rate even further and protect the two million Pennsylvanians who are receiving food assistance.
At a time when the federal government is rolling back funding for groundbreaking research, Pennsylvania is stepping up.
One of the most heartbreaking problems our grandmoms and grandpops face are neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, ALS, and Parkinson’s.
There are members of this body who have lost parents to these terrible diseases.
Including Rep. Mullins, who lost his father Michael, and Rep. Cutler, who lost both parents.
This budget delivers $5 million in research grants for research institutions studying these neurodegenerative diseases.
Here’s another way the federal government is hurting Pennsylvanians.
They’re walking away from vital disaster response funding.
So how did we respond? Democrats and Republicans came together to double funding for emergency preparedness here in Pennsylvania.
I know from my visits to Tioga, Bucks, Somerset, Berks counties, and so many communities across this Commonwealth how sorely this funding is needed.
I firmly believe that every Pennsylvanian deserves to both be safe and feel safe in their community.
That’s why I made a commitment when I was running for Governor that we would fund 2,000 more police officers.
Now, with this budget, between municipal and state troopers we have secured the funding to put nearly 2,000 more police officers on the beat in our communities.
But I know that preventing violence in our communities requires a two pronged approach.
That’s why, under LG Davis’ leadership, PCCD has made a point to invest in community-based programs —
Like sports programs, afterschool activities, church groups, mentorship programs, apprenticeships and workforce training opportunities.
As a result of our work across Pennsylvania, violent crime is down 12 percent and fatal gun violence is down 42 percent.
This year, we’re building on that progress by increasing funding for violence prevention programs by another 10 percent.
This budget includes a lot of priorities that are really close to my heart – from feeding our neighbors, to helping our kids chart their own course in life, to creating opportunity for workers and business owners.
But this budget also includes one item that is really personal for me this year — a $7 million line item, representing a $2 million increase in much-needed funding for the Harrisburg Bureau of Fire.
Chief Enterline and the firefighters of the Harrisburg Bureau of Fire were there when me and my family needed them most.
Every single day, like fire fighters across Pennsylvania, they run into danger to keep the people of this community safe from harm.
They together with their sisters and brothers in uniform — from those who walk the beat to those who bear the seal of the Pennsylvania National Guard, are the best of us.
And all of them are lifted up in this budget.
A budget isn’t just a bunch of numbers on a spreadsheet — it’s a statement of our priorities.
It’s about investing in the needs of people now and building for the future.
It’s about finding ways to incorporate the needs of people from all different walks of life in our Commonwealth — rural, urban, and suburban communities alike.
It’s about finding a way, in this divided government, to compromise without compromising your values.
I said at the outset that what I knew to be absolutely certain, that to pass a budget, everyone was going to have to give a little, and understand the perspectives of others a little bit better.
We did that here.
And as a result of our collective work, the good people of Pennsylvania are better off.
Once again, we showed that here in Pennsylvania, we can get stuff done.
Thank you.
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