Democrats who control the state House dramatically upped the stakes in this year's budget debate on Monday, proposing a $29.1 billion budget that effectively defunds higher education in a theatrical effort to break a nearly two-week old stalemate.
''I balanced the budget,'' the plan's architect, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dwight Evans, boasted to reporters. ''I'm holding myself out as someone who wants to get this done.''
Not so, said Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, who dismissed the proposal as a ''scam on the higher education system and on our taxpayers.
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