Senate leaders boycott Senate leaders' budget proposal

(AP) Harrisburg - State Senate leaders today boycotted a conference committee meeting organized by state Senate leaders to discuss a state budget proposal and to introduce their own budget plan.

Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware, said today that Senate Republicans are fashioning a revised budget bill to compete with another revised budget bill that they released yesterday. The measure could be down voted in the Senate in favor of their other measure.

If the House were to agree with the disagreement, their bill or their other bill could be on the governor's desk by late this week, or not.

Details of the bill were unavailable at the time, but the other revised budget bill is believed to be $100 million smaller than the other budget bill that was previously agreed to the day before.

House Democrats are proposing an alternative-alternative plan which is $1 billion less than the amendment to the previous amendment that substituted an alternative amendment to a section which was previously amended.

Earlier, an aide to Representative Dwight Evans, D-Philadelphia, threw up his hands and said "I dunno, you tell me what's going on."

The budget should have been adopted by the start of the new fiscal year July 1st, although the start of the new fiscal year had been previously amended to start December 1st.