With Pa. state budget signed, who are the winners and losers in the final bargain?

After 19 weeks on a knife edge, Pennsylvania finally has a budget. The short-term political problems have been solved through a series of give-and-take compromises; the long-term political problems remain.

The quick version of this year’s budget impasse is that Democrats offered to come down from Gov. Josh Shapiro’s original budget request - which featured $51.5 billion in general fund spending – but were leery of going too far below the $50 billion mark and cutting into the bone of programs they’ve championed.

Republicans were adamant that Shapiro’s budget framework ran an excessive deficit and would result in runaway spending, passing a flat-funded budget bill of $47 to $48 billion multiple times to make the point.

Over the past few weeks, Republicans were suddenly willing to move the