The Pennsylvania budget standoff has begun to resemble an octopus wrestling match. There are so many arms and legs involved, nobody can be sure who’s winning or losing.

Gov. Tom Wolf and the Democrats want more money for education — $400 million a year for K-12 schooling plus another $100 million for special education. They also want significant property tax relief — a combined $3.8 billion or $1,000 relief for the average homeowner.

Wolf also seeks an $80 million increase for the state-related universities and $45 million for the State System of Higher Education — which, by the way, announced last week it has increased tuition by 3.5 percent at its 14 campuses including Slippery Rock University.

Finally, Wolf wants to cut the state’s corporate net income tax in half, from 9.99 percent to 4.99 percent.

To pay for the school money, property tax relief and corporate income tax reduction, Wolf wants to impose a 5 percent severance tax on gas wells, increase personal income tax from 3.07 percent to 3.7 percent, and increase sales tax from 6 percent to 6.6 percent.

Too many moving parts, say the Republican who control the state House and Senate.

“We can see the shell game with respect to who’s paying for the new taxes, but the fact of the matter is, the bottom line is, he wants to significantly increase spending and significantly new taxes,” said House Speaker Mike Turzai, R-McCandless Township, when Wolf proposed his budget in early March.

For the Republicans’ part, they’re no better than the Democrats. They’ve thrown in more secondary issues than the governor did.

They want to privatize the state’s liquor monopoly and reform the public pension fund by converting new hires to a 401(k) plan. Wolf vetoed legislation pushing both initiatives — along with a GOP budget that included no tax increases or gas severance tax.

With both sides stuck on an all-or-nothing posture, no compromise is possible. Nothing is what the stand off accomplishes for Pennsylvanians.

It might be better at this point to remove some of the unnecessary issues and concentrate on what’s most essential.

Simplify.

For the Democrats, the severance tax can wait; either that, or the sales and personal income tax increases can wait. Pick one or the other, but not both.

For the Republicans, the liquor control privatization could happen any time, not just during a budget negotiation. So could pension reform.

What’s left for negotiating is one revenue source — either the severance tax or a personal income tax increase — and limit new spending to the amount of increased revenue.

It certainly would make the process less of a shell game as Turzai so accurately calls it.