RealClearPennsylvania Articles

Over the past decade, the lack of access to in-home care in Pennsylvania has reached a crisis point. From seniors to medically fragile children, more than 400,000 Pennsylvanians rely on various types of in-home care to live their lives with dignity and security, but today, more than 112,500 caregiver shifts are missed and 27% of nursing hours go unfilled every month across Pennsylvania.  These services are under severe strain – and sometimes unavailable altogether – because of staff shortages created by a lack of necessary investment, year after year, from our elected leaders...

What is the state of the City of Pittsburgh? The question is debated even more than usual these days, probably because 2025 will see multiple municipal elections across Pennsylvania. And what people believe about Pittsburgh is subject to the same information distortions that color our national politics. It’s not uncommon, for example, to hear laments about the city’s persistent population and employment losses. I would not be surprised if most regional residents believe that Pittsburgh is the root cause of job and population losses affecting southwestern Pennsylvania. Are they...

In three successive presidential cycles, Erie County has revealed itself as the state’s political bellwether. In voting for Donald Trump in 2016, Joe Biden in 2020, and then Trump again in 2024, Erie, as it has done in 19 of 20 presidential races since 1948, tracked Pennsylvania’s presidential choice. And in every presidential election since 2008, as the Keystone State goes, so goes the nation. Now it’s 2025, and this time it’s a mayoral race – in the county seat, the city of Erie – that will offer insight into what voters are thinking. The race pits...

According to the Nation’s Report Card, nearly 70% of Pennsylvania’s eighth-graders can’t read or do math at grade level. Results are worse in Philadelphia, where 95% of Black eighth-graders aren’t proficient at math, and 89% can't read at grade level. Moreover, 90% of Hispanic eighth-graders aren’t meeting achievement levels. Gov. Josh Shapiro has abandoned these kids. The declining performance in public schools has occurred despite record increases in public school funding, including more than $4 billion in increases in state taxpayer funding in the last...

Pennsylvania faces an unsettling prospect: California-style blackouts looming on the horizon. This is a troubling shift for a state that proudly stands as a net energy exporter. Yet, despite this enviable position, Pennsylvanians find themselves burdened with residential electricity costs that exceed the national average by 13%. Since 2018, the state’s residents have endured electric rate hikes outpacing those of neighboring states, resulting in a staggering 30% increase in energy costs. That’s driven monthly costs for electricity, heating, and gasoline to $669 per household...

Democratic politicians, the Washington “swamp,” and the legacy media would all have you believe that not a penny can be safely cut from the national budget. Democrats are even sending paddleboard messages to protest the cuts – the consequences would be unthinkable, they allege. It’s theater of the absurd: performance art and virtue signaling from Democrats who really care only about preserving the swamp and its prerogatives. Most Americans have a better idea of what’s at stake: our tax dollars, controlling inflation, and making some progress in fighting our...

Democratic politicians, the Washington “swamp,” and the legacy media would all have you believe that not a penny can be safely cut from the national budget. Democrats are even sending paddleboard messages to protest the cuts – the consequences would be unthinkable, they allege. It’s theater of the absurd: performance art and virtue signaling from Democrats who really care only about preserving the swamp and its prerogatives. Most Americans have a better idea of what’s at stake: our tax dollars, controlling inflation, and making some progress in fighting our...

Embattled Pittsburgh mayor Ed Gainey’s ongoing push for a citywide inclusionary zoning ordinance has people across the city asking themselves a familiar question: How do we keep housing affordable in a place that’s lost residents for decades and still struggles to pay its bills? Gainey wants every large new residential development in the city to include set-aside units for lower-income households. On its surface, that sounds fair enough. Gentrification in neighborhoods like Lawrenceville, Polish Hill, Oakland, and Bloomfield has reached levels many longtime Pittsburghers never...

In a country that may feel increasingly divided, there is still at least one issue we all can stand behind together: Washington shouldn’t be raising anyone’s taxes. Keeping more of the money you work hard for is key to preserving the American Dream, especially for Hispanic families in Pennsylvania.   The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) provided tax cuts that increased the standard deduction for families, lowered the tax burden on small businesses, and put more money back in the hands of Pennsylvanians. With 1 in 4 new businesses being...

Following the recent contentious Oval Office meeting between President Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy, Gov. Josh Shapiro quickly jumped into the fray, issuing a statement blaming the President and Vice President for the dispute while offering his own “tough talk” against Russia.   In this hasty yet hollow response, Shapiro once again proves he is quick to speak but absent when it is time to take real action. If Shapiro truly cared about the safety and security of America and standing with our European allies, he would act now by...

We are seeing a dramatic realignment of political parties and values. Democrats now cater to fringe communities, females, coastal elites, and the Ivy League-educated. Republicans now appeal to the working class, males, middle America, and the non-college-educated. Our elected leaders failed us during the pandemic. Millions of Generation X, Millennial, and Generation Z Americans are still angry about mandates, lockdowns, and the authoritarian way that the Biden administration denied them things such as high school and college graduation ceremonies, on-campus classes, athletic competitions, and...

Measuring a state’s economic vitality can be tricky, but Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita – a measure of total economic output divided by population, reflecting productivity and living standards – offers a reliable picture. GDP per capita cuts through the noise, like batting average in baseball or EBITDA in business. Pennsylvania, the fifth most populous state, ranks a surprising 27th among the 50 states and the District of Columbia in GDP per capita, generating just over $75,000 per resident. For a state dubbed “The Saudi Arabia of Natural Gas,” located...

It’s safe to say that most Pennsylvania Democrats are chastened by their loss of the White House, the U.S. Senate seat held by Bob Casey, and three row offices. In 2016, many Democrats saw Donald J. Trump as illegitimate, but that’s harder to do now after he won the popular as well as electoral vote. How will Democrats respond to voters in the second Trump administration and rebuild their political brand? Sen. John Fetterman is a high-profile example of how some Democrats expect to win back voters: by showing that they are willing to work with President Trump. Since the election,...

Americans are familiar with the story of the Great Depression, a deep and lasting economic slump that plagued not just workers and families but businesses and households around the world starting with the stock market crash in 1929 and running through the 1930s. Not as many are aware that a similar recessionary period struck the U.S. just eight years before the 1929 crash. The result of that earlier downturn was very different, and so were the tactics used to combat it.After a relatively short economic correction, that earlier slump gave way to the Roaring Twenties, a memorable American era...

Pennsylvania cyber charter schools are under attack for – of all things – not wastefully spending taxpayer money. The Pennsylvania Department of the Auditor General recently audited a sample of cyber charter schools. After examining five of the state’s 14 cyber charter schools, the auditor general released its findings. Opponents of cyber charters repeatedly point to their operating surplus of $365 million, claiming these schools hoard public dollars. As lawmakers prepare to negotiate the 2025–26 state budget, calls to defund cyber charters have reached a...

Donald Trump’s Pennsylvania victory was a story within a story. He not only won the state but also changed the GOP path to winning it. His 2024 county map looks nothing like the 1988 winning map of George H. W. Bush, the last Republican to win here before Trump did in 2016. Trump’s 2024 map barely resembles the near-miss 2004 map for George W. Bush, or even the maps of local GOP winners Gov. Tom Corbett (2010) and U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey (2016). I was raised in South Philly’s 26th ward and am now a resident of Tredyffrin, in Chester County. The political evolution of both...

Thanks in part to African-American men, Pennsylvania’s political tectonics are shifting in ways that were unimaginable just a short time ago. In the 2024 presidential election, 24% of Pennsylvania’s African American men voted for President Trump. Given that 14% of Pennsylvania’s African-American men voted for President Trump in 2016, adding 10 points of growth directly from the Democratic Party’s base vote qualifies as serious seismic activity.  Since the presidential election, these demographic tremors appear to be growing stronger.  A...

For years, Pennsylvania’s energy industry has been stalled by the uncertainty created by then-Gov. Tom Wolf’s attempts to impose a tax on electricity. Questions about whether Pennsylvania would participate in the multistate Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) have often been cited to explain why energy producers in the state have gone offline, avoided new investments, and hiked prices on consumers. Every time a state resident opens his monthly electric bill, he’s paying more money because of Wolf’s bad policies. Gov. Josh Shapiro had a chance to choose a...

Watch Gov. Josh Shapiro closely during his annual budget address on Tuesday. The governor will lay out his vision for the upcoming year – undoubtedly full of big ideas and pretentious rhetoric. Yet, what will be most interesting is whether Shapiro addresses the elephant in the room: Pennsylvania’s $3.6 billion structural deficit. This deficit isn’t new; the governor has ignored and expanded it. During Shapiro’s last budget address, he didn’t even mention the word “deficit.” Instead, he proposed a 7.1% increase in General Fund spending...