Published in the Lehigh Valley Live, by Emanuele DeStefano

September 7, 2014

President Franklin Roosevelt claimed that "repetition does not transform a lie into a truth." How the times have changed since his day. Tom Wolf and his PAC-attack minions are telling and retelling the untrue claim that Gov. Tom Corbett cut $1 billion from education. Was Roosevelt wrong? Does repetition transform a lie into truth?

Facts, those pesky facts, somehow impede agendas. Former Gov. Ed Rendell was responsible for state budgets from 2008 through 2011. His education budgets for those years were $9.1 million, $8.7 million and $8.6 million. Those figures are public record.

Corbett's education budgets were $9.1 million, $9.5 million, $9.8 million and $10 million. Perhaps under Common Core math, $10 million is $1 billion less than $8.6 million, but in the real world, Corbett increased the education budget by $1.5 million; during Rendell's term, it went down by $554,000.

Oh, I know, the Democrats will point to the so-called federal stimulus money Rendell used to cover up his education budget cuts, but that money was one-time and earmarked for programs that would add to the economy and create jobs, not be used for on-going expenses and budgetary chicanery.

During the Corbett administration the Pocono Mountain School District cut its budget by $25 million and reduced property taxes twice. Corbett does not propose local school budgets, responsible school directors do. Corbett did not fire teachers; school boards did because student population in Pennsylvania has decreased by about 4 percent. Fewer students require fewer teachers.

(Emanuele DeStefano, "LETTER: State education budgets went down in Rendell years, up in Corbett years," Lehigh Valley Live, 9/7/14)