There is plenty to criticize in the second budget of the Corbett administration for those with differing priorities.
But in our view his budget hit most of the touchstones necessary for a Pennsylvania state budget in 2012.
The $27.7 billion plan increases spending by 1.5 percent, less than the rate of inflation. That's a big checkmark, especially because the budget addressed somewhat the debt, pension and health care costs for now and in the future.
It includes cuts to various business taxes that total millions of dollars but reverse the long-term, business-unfriendly tax structure of Pennsylvania. Without these cuts, the state simply can't compete for jobs in the future.
And the budget was made better by late negotiations with the House and Senate that softened some of the previous cost-cutting measures.
There was $84 million restored to the governor's proposed 20-percent cuts to human services funding.
The budget avoids elimination of a $100 million block grant for schools and a 20- to 30-percent cut to funding for public universities. Instead, funding for public education remained stationary, including allocations to state universities.
The new initiative in the budget is tax credits to entice construction of a new petrochemical industry.
That initiative along with a decision to eliminate General Assistance, a Depression-era program that provides $200 a month for about 70,000 disabled adults, make it easy to criticize Corbett for being kind to business at the expense of education and the poor.
But that's an oversimplification that conveniently disregards the circumstances. There is a school funding crisis because of an outmoded salary and benefits structure for administration and instructional personnel that carries with it unsustainable costs.
Until that changes there won't be enough money for public education in the future, plain and simple. And there also won't be enough for other parts of Pennsylvania's umbrella - the needs of the state's poor, elderly, handicapped and human services agencies.
Until the critics sit down and talk about these needed changes with the administration, the criticisms of the hard, necessary decisions regarding funding and priorities come off as out-of-touch.
