Gov. Tom Corbett (R-PA), as I outlined earlier, has released a budget that places the brunt of reducing the state’s $4 billion deficit onto the backs of public workers (including teachers), students, and those in the state who depend upon public services. At the same time that he’s proposing $1 billion in cuts to public education, Corbett is trying to cut corporate taxes.

Corbett has made his priorities crystal clear, but his gutting of public education is by no means necessary. CAP Senior Fellow Donna Cooper suggested four ways Pennsylvania could raise revenue by ending special interest tax breaks:

– CLOSE CORPORATE TAX LOOPHOLES: Currently, 7 out of every 10 companies incorporated in Pennsylvania don’t pay corporate taxes in the state. A provision of the tax code known as the “Delaware loophole” allows corporations to shift income out of the state and into lower-tax jurisdictions. Closing corporate tax loopholes could raise the state $450 million in annual revenue.

– TAX GAS FRACKING: Pennsylvania is the only state in the nation’s top 15 gas producers that doesn’t levy a tax on the environmentally destructive “fracking” industry. A properly structrured tax on the industry could raise more than $400 million annually.

– END THE SALES TAX GIVEAWAY: Pennsylvania actually pays companies a bonus for turning in the sales taxes they’ve collected from their customers in a “timely” manner. The tax break primarily benefits companies with sales in the state exceeding $1 billion. Eliminating this practice (which gives no benefit to consumers) would save the state $76 million annually.

– TAX SMOKELESS TOBACCO PRODUCTS AND CIGARS: Pennsylvania is the only state in the nation that doesn’t tax smokeless tobacco products and one of only two that doesn’t tax cigars (the other is Florida). Extending the state’s tobacco tax to these products not only makes sense from a public health perspective but could raise almost $50 million annually.

And here are two more:

– END THE ONLINE SALES TAX EXEMPTION: Pennsylvania does not levy a tax on online sales, giving out-of-state vendors a leg up on those based in the state. This exemption costs Pennsylvania $62 million annually.

– INCREASING TAXES ON NON-WAGE INCOME: Increasing the tax on non-wage income, such as capital gains and dividends, which is largely earned by the wealthy, to just 4 percent would raise more than $350 million annually, according to the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center.

These revenue-raising measure would make Pennsylvania’s tax system more equitable and would raise more than enough money to cover the cost of Corbett’s proposed education cuts. Pennsylvania could also look at its personal income tax system, which is one of the most regressive in the nation. Pennsylvania currently has a flat-rate income tax, instead of a graduated progressive tax. At the moment, the poorest 20 percent of Pennsylvania residents pay a state tax rate of 11.2 percent, while the richest one percent of residents pay just 3.9 percent.

Last year, Koch Industries began employing New Media Strategies (NMS), an Internet PR firm that specializes in “word-of-mouth marketing” for major corporations including Coca-Cola, Burger King, AT&T, Dodge and Ford. It appears that, ever since the NMS contract was inked with Koch, an NMS employee began editing the Wikipedia page for “Charles Koch,” “David Koch,” “Political activities of the Koch family,” and “The Science of Success” (a book written by Charles). Under the moniker of “MBMAdmirer,” NMS employees edited Wikipedia articles to distance the Koch family from the Tea Party movement, to provide baseless comparisons between Koch and conspiracy theories surrounding George Soros, and to generally delete citations to liberal news outlets. After administrators flagged the MBMAdmirer account as a “sock puppet” — one of many fake accounts used to manipulate new media sites — a subsequent sock puppet investigation found that MBMAdmirer is connected to a number of dummy accounts and ones owned by NMS employees like Jeff Taylor.

Soren Dayton, a GOP operative and executive at New Media Strategies, is reported to be the contact for Koch Industries at NMS. Reached by phone yesterday by ThinkProgress, Dayton exclaimed, “I’m not going to talk about this, thanks,” before hanging up. Lyndsey Medsker, a senior account director for NMS, spoke to ThinkProgress today. She explained that NMS also maintains the Koch Industries Twitter page, Facebook page, and has an active team working on promoting Koch Industries in the comment section of blogs and news websites.

As ThinkProgress has reported, the billionaire Koch brothers maintain contracts with over a dozen public relation firms and lobbying firms. Pushing back again recent scrutiny, the brothers have also relied on a conservative media infrastructure owned by the Koch brothers or closely linked to them by way of their donor conferences. We have documented how the Koch message machine has targeted ThinkProgress and even placed hit-pieces against a New Yorker journalist investigated the Kochs. But now it seems the Koch brothers are at work manipulating Wikipedia to polish their image.

As we’ve been documenting, several conservative governors have been asking their middle- and lower-income to bear the brunt of deficit reduction in their states, while simultaneously cutting corporate taxes and handing out new tax breaks to favored industries. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) yesterday was the latest to unveil a budget that guts important investments in education to pay for tax cuts that the state can’t afford:

In education, Corbett’s budget would wipe out more than $550 million in basic funding – a 10 percent cut from this year – and an additional $260 million in grants to school districts for prekindergarten, full-day kindergarten, and class-size reduction in kindergarten through third grade…All together, education advocates say, basic education funding would be reduced by more than $1 billion. [...]

In other areas, the administration is proposing to resume the phaseout of the capital stock and franchise tax, a levy on companies incorporated in Pennsylvania.

“It’s even worse than I thought it would be,” Ron Cowell, a former state legislator and president of the Education Policy and Leadership Council, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Corbett also said that he will ask public employees to take pay and benefit cuts, and proposed a pay freeze for Pennsylvania’s teachers. But while asking his state’s public employees, teachers, and students to sacrifice, Corbett let one big Pennsylvania player off easy — the state’s gas “fracking” industry:

But there’s another group that’s tapping into big-time wealth — a buried treasure right here in Pennsylvania — that isn’t facing those kinds of tough decision that causes a pay-frozen schoolteacher’s family to cut back on groceries or cancel a weekend down the shore.

That would be the economically booming, mostly out-of-state natural gas companies and their multi-millionaire CEOs, who continue to rapidly expand their aggressive form of drilling known as hydrofracking, or simply “fracking,” across large swaths of upstate Pennsylvania. The companies take in hundreds of millions of dollars without paying any dedicated Pennsylvania tax — even as such levies are imposed in the other 14 of the top 15 gas-producing states, even in red-state bastions of free-market libertarianism like Dick Cheney’s native Wyoming and George W. Bush’s Texas.

Corbett’s budget also “articulates a philosophy of regulation that makes the hair stand up for many concerned about the burgeoning natural gas industry,” calling for expedited permits for the industry. Why isn’t Corbett asking the environmentally destructive fracking industry to pay its fair share? Maybe it’s that he received “a whopping $835,720 from oil-and-natural gas interests, including his largest single contributor — Marcellus Shale driller Terry Pegula and his wife Kim, who gave $305,000 to the Republican’s campaign.”

As Hypocrisy Watch PA summed up, “the juxtaposition was stunning in the budget plan [Corbett] released yesterday. It was a dream come true for Big Business – with hundreds of millions of dollars of tax breaks including a new 35% cut in one major corporate tax. Meanwhile, working families got hosed: programs to prevent foreclosure and make housing affordable were eliminated; K-12 public school cuts of over $1 billion…and unprecedented higher education cuts.”

The Senate will vote today on H.R. 1, the House Republican spending plan for the remainder of 2011 that guts vital funding for education, job creation, infrastructure, anti-poverty programs, housing assistance, and more. The plan is not expected to pass the Senate, but neither is a version supported by Senate Democrats.

So the question of federal spending levels for the remainder of the fiscal year will remain unanswered. But today, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) presented an alternative to the House Republicans’ slash-and-burn approach to budgeting in a speech at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Noting that “today, we have to solve both our growth problem and our deficit problem together,” Schumer laid out a progressive plan to reduce the deficit.

First, Schumer revived his proposal from last year to institute a surtax on millionaires and billionaires. “I must say I noted with interest that in last week’s Wall Street Journal-NBC poll, the most popular proposal to reduce the deficit — out of 23 options surveyed — was a surtax on millionaires and billionaires,” he said.

Schumer also promoted closing the tax gap by cracking down on tax dodging and income sheltering by big corporations. “There is much we can do in the tax code to crack down on cheaters and vastly improve compliance,” he said. “Any credible deficit plan should tackle the so-called ‘tax gap’ — the gap between taxes owed and taxes paid — which has gotten as high as over $300 billion a year this past decade.”

He also advocated cutting the wasteful subsidies that are handed out every year to industries, including the oil and gas industries, that don’t need them. Schumer expanded on these ideas in an interview today with ThinkProgress:

All these kinds of subsidies should be on the table, but the one that sticks out like a sore thumb is oil and gas because the entire rationale for it is gone. It was passed, I think, when the price of oil was $17 a barrel, we had low production, and now of course, the price of oil is $100 a barrel. The subsidy, in economic terms, doesn’t mean anything other than to make some people wealthy who are already wealthy.

Watch it:

Schumer also pushed back hard on the notion that Social Security cuts should be a part of deficit reduction. In response to a reporter’s question, he said “Social Security doesn’t have any problems until 20 years from now,” adding that the deficit needs to be reduced long before then.

Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.

The Senate will vote today on H.R. 1, the House Republican spending plan for the remainder of 2011 that guts vital funding for education, job creation, infrastructure, anti-poverty programs, housing assistance, and more. The plan is not expected to pass the Senate, but neither is a version supported by Senate Democrats.

So the question of federal spending levels for the remainder of the fiscal year will remain unanswered. But today, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) presented an alternative to the House Republicans’ slash-and-burn approach to budgeting in a speech at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Noting that “today, we have to solve both our growth problem and our deficit problem together,” Schumer laid out a progressive plan to reduce the deficit.

First, Schumer revived his proposal from last year to institute a surtax on millionaires and billionaires. “I must say I noted with interest that in last week’s Wall Street Journal-NBC poll, the most popular proposal to reduce the deficit — out of 23 options surveyed — was a surtax on millionaires and billionaires,” he said.

Schumer also promoted closing the tax gap by cracking down on tax dodging and income sheltering by big corporations. “There is much we can do in the tax code to crack down on cheaters and vastly improve compliance,” he said. “Any credible deficit plan should tackle the so-called ‘tax gap’ — the gap between taxes owed and taxes paid — which has gotten as high as over $300 billion a year this past decade.”

He also advocated cutting the wasteful subsidies that are handed out every year to industries, including the oil and gas industries, that don’t need them. Schumer expanded on these ideas in an interview today with ThinkProgress:

All these kinds of subsidies should be on the table, but the one that sticks out like a sore thumb is oil and gas because the entire rationale for it is gone. It was passed, I think, when the price of oil was $17 a barrel, we had low production, and now of course, the price of oil is $100 a barrel. The subsidy, in economic terms, doesn’t mean anything other than to make some people wealthy who are already wealthy.

Watch it:

Schumer also pushed back hard on the notion that Social Security cuts should be a part of deficit reduction. In response to a reporter’s question, he said “Social Security doesn’t have any problems until 20 years from now,” adding that the deficit needs to be reduced long before then.