Dear Editor,

The recent budget proposed by Gov. Wolf is a bad budget a very, very bad budget.According to the Commonwealth Foundation, this massive tax-and-spend plan will increase spending by over $2.5 billion (with a b) and will increase taxes for a family of four by over $1,400 per year in additional taxes!Where does this help the working families or our commonwealth in any way? Why is a liberal's solution always for more spending and higher taxes, when it clearly has never worked to improve anything? As a successful businessperson, Gov. Wolf knows this is bad for our state but has backed himself into a corner with all his promises for more funding to education and social programs, which do not always improve anything. This massive tax-and-spend plan will increase our sales and income taxes permanently with simply a promise to maybe decrease your property taxes.In addition, Gov. Wolf continues to ignore that the state pension systems are over $50 billion in deficit and offers no solution except for possibly borrowing billions of dollars in pension bonds and substantially increasing our long-term debt.The answer to improving our lives and making Pennsylvania prosper is to reduce our taxes and state spending the complete opposite of what Gov. Wolf and his liberal advisers are proposing. Thank you for the opportunity to express my viewpoint.Robert V. StraussNesquehoning