Totalitarian Pennsylvania Update.

Philly Machine hack "Slow Eddie" Rendell is just another big government, high tax, big spending, leftist moron vote buyer. You should have known better, Pennsylvania.

From the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and AP:

State spending during Gov. Ed Rendell's first three years in office increased faster than the national average, while his first-term spending is projected to be just shy of the two-decade peak set by the late former Gov. Robert P. Casey.

Counting the budget for the current fiscal year, which Rendell just signed, the state's general fund budget has grown by $5.7 billion, or 28 percent, since he took office in 2003, according to an Associated Press analysis of figures provided by the state budget office.

Casey, a fellow Democrat whose son is now the state treasurer, approved increases that totaled 28.3 percent during his first term, from 1987 to 1990. In Casey's second term, spending grew by 26.2 percent.

In between the Casey and Rendell administrations, the two Republican governors who shared an eight-year tenure _ Tom Ridge and Mark Schweiker _ held spending growth to well below 20 percent in each four-year term.

The comparison is important because Republican Lynn Swann, Rendell's re-election challenger, is making an issue of Rendell's fiscal stewardship.

Within hours after the Republican-controlled Legislature passed the fourth and last budget of Rendell's first term, which will increase spending by 5.8 percent over last year, Swann issued a statement calling the budget "bloated" and urging Rendell to veto it.

The overall dollar increase during the Rendell administration has been fueled largely by an expansion in subsidies for public schools, pensions, medical care for the poor and child care services. The former Philadelphia mayor has made a point of keeping services for the poor intact while pouring money into signature programs targeted at improving early childhood education.

Rendell's average annual increase of 6.6 percent in his first three years is nearly a percentage point bigger than the 5.7 percent average annual increase in other states' general fund budgets over the same period, according to figures from the National Association of State Budget Officers.

It is also bigger than the 5.5 percent average annual increase in other states' general fund budgets over the previous two decades, the figures show.