Shapiro’s Agenda Misses What Pennsylvanians Want

Following the midterm landslide, Gov. Josh Shapiro and Pennsylvania Democrats laid out their policy agenda—and it appears they have misread voters.

With their first trifecta in decades, Pennsylvania Democrats, who campaigned on affordability, plan to introduce a litany of progressive legislation next year. Pennsylvanians can expect bills that propose raising the minimum wage, bailing out mass transit statewide, and constitutionalizing abortion rights.

Agree or disagree with this agenda, there’s one problem: None of these policies will make life more affordable for Pennsylvanians.

Minimum Wage

Take the minimum-wage increase, for example. Our research suggests that this policy is moot. Only 42,900 Pennsylvanians—less than 1 percent of the workforce—earned the minimum wage or less in 2025. This is a record low, down by about 42 percent in just five years.

Also, most minimum-wage workers aren’t struggling breadwinners. About 80 percent of them are part-time and have no kids.

Besides, markets have mostly solved this issue. Even the Shapiro administration conceded at budget hearings that market wages will reach $15 by 2027 without a mandate.

But this isn’t a policy change without consequences. The Independent Fiscal Office estimates a $15 mandate would cost 15,600 jobs, disproportionately harming women, people of color, and rural workers. Moreover, consumers pay for the wage hike, absorbing 60 percent of the cost through higher prices.

Put simply, the pathway to affordability does not start with the minimum wage.

What Pennsylvanians Actually Want

Pennsylvanians have other ideas for bringing down the cost of living. Statewide polling shows that:

• 89 percent want more tax-credit scholarships to make a better education more affordable.
• 93 percent want to limit government spending.
• 89 percent want to lower the state income tax.
• 78 percent want to cut regulatory red tape that hamstrings new businesses.
• 86 percent want to eliminate electricity taxes.
• 85 percent want policies that make Pennsylvanians less dependent on government assistance.

Clearly, Pennsylvanians have different priorities than the incoming legislative and governing majority. Moreover, they see free-market solutions as the better pathway to affordability.

A Better Pennsylvania

That’s why the Commonwealth Foundation developed the Better PA agenda. This agenda introduces 25 free-market solutions that will reinvigorate the local economy and introduce genuine affordability. Backed by polling, these policies are what Pennsylvanians want.

Such policies include:

• Educational choice. Families should be able to choose the school that best fits their kid. Proposals like Lifeline Scholarships would help more than 200,000 students stuck in failing district schools, and a refundable tax credit would help families offset the cost of non-public options. Shapiro should also opt Pennsylvania into the new Federal Scholarship Tax Credit before January 1, 2027.
• Affordable energy. Pennsylvania is an energy powerhouse, yet families are paying more every month. Expanding production and rejecting new energy taxes would help lower bills.
• Low taxes and less red tape. Accelerating cuts to the corporate net income tax and reforming the state’s more than 164,000 regulations would help employers hire and raise wages, no mandate required.

These are just a few of our ideas that reward work and expand opportunity without sending the bill to consumers and taxpayers.

Pennsylvanians have been clear about what they want. They aren’t asking for more mandates and bigger subsidies. They’re demanding affordable energy, more educational options, and lower taxes. Those are the kitchen-table issues driving families to consider leaving the commonwealth.

Yet these issues barely register in Harrisburg. The Shapiro administration and Pennsylvania Democrats must tread carefully: Voters scuttled one party that failed to deliver on affordability promises—and they can do it again.

Learn more at betterPAtoday.com.