Pennsylvania would lose about $300 million in federal money starting in January, said Charles Zogby, Gov. Tom Corbett‘s budget secretary.
“The potential impact of going over the ‘fiscal cliff,‘ on every state, is enormous,” Corbett told the Tribune-Review last week. “It will go to education. It will go to welfare.”
On average, people would pay about 8 percent more of their income toward taxes, with those in the higher and lower brackets hardest hit, said the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan research organization.
Among programs that likely would absorb cuts are Women, Infants and Children (WIC), which assists pregnant women and families, and the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which helps provide heat through grants to about 500,000 Pennsylvanians.