Gov. Tom Wolf delivers his budget address for the 2015-16 fiscal year to a joint session of the Pennsylvania House and Senate on Tuesday, March 3, 2015, in Harrisburg, Pa. Wolf is seeking more than $4 billion in higher taxes on income, sales and natural gas drilling to support new spending on education, property tax cuts and erasing a large projected deficit next year.

HARRISBURG — Gov. Tom Wolf today prepares to veto a GOP-engineered short-term spending plan.

Before his planned veto he attacked the Legislature’s Republican majority leaders as “the only thing standing between us and a real budget” as a state government stalemate nears its fourth month and.

The first-term Democrat defended his stance in negotiations as seeking a sound, long-term fiscal path versus a series of flawed, Washington, D.C.-style short-term fixes.

“I think the only thing standing between us and a real budget are Republican leaders,” Wolf said this morning during a regularly scheduled appearance on a Pittsburgh radio station.

On Friday, Republican leaders said for the first time that they would allow a floor vote on a budget package that includes an income or sales tax increase if Democrats can secure enough support to pass it.

Face-to-face talks between Wolf and top Republican lawmakers ended Monday afternoon without any breakthroughs but were expected to continue today.

Wolf has sought a multibillion-dollar tax increase that he says is necessary to wipe out the GOP’s funding cuts for schools and human services enacted under his Republican predecessor, Tom Corbett, and to eliminate a long-term budget deficit. He also wants measures to cut residential school property taxes and impose a severance tax on the natural gas industry.

Stephen Miskin, a spokesman for House Majority Leader Dave Reed, R-Indiana, said people can’t afford the tax increases that Wolf wants. Wolf has rejected the Republicans’ reasonable and responsible spending plans so that he can hold schools and social services hostage in budget negotiations, Miskin said.