As members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives prepared to vote on an on-again, off-again resolution to the state’s budget impasse, legislators from Butler County weighed in on the matter.

Late Tuesday afternoon members of the House voted 100 to 99 to replace what had been a stopgap budget recommended by the Appropriations Committee with a framework budget — essentially the $30.8 billion budget proposed by the Senate over the weekend.

Rep. Jim Marshall, R- 14th, whose district includes portions of Butler County, said he believed the $30.8 billion Senate proposal House members will vote on today would require about $1.8 billion in revenue increases to fund.

The measure that House members will vote on this afternoon is a general appropriations bill. Passing it would send it to Gov. Tom Wolf, whose signature would release state funding. But legislators from both the House and Senate still would have to approve taxes to fund the budget. Those measures haven’t been introduced yet.

Marshall, who said he supported the House’s previous plan to pass an emergency funding bill after a pension overhaul attached to the budget was defeated in the House last weekend, said he planned to vote against the budget proposal today.

“I certainly want to do everything I can to keep our schools open, and would certainly love to ... allow the tax revenue to go to counties and school districts,” Marshall said. “My concern is that I don’t support a broad tax increase to pay for this spending.”

Marshall, like other county legislators, said he’s been receiving “overwhelming” calls and e-mails from constituents asking him to oppose tax increases.

Rep. Jeffrey Pyle, R-60th, whose district includes portions of Butler and Armstrong counties, said he voted for the weekend budget deal despite philosophical differences.

“I don’t think we have a revenue problem. I think we have a spending problem,” Pyle said. “But I’ve voted for every damn spending bill that came down.“

On Monday Pyle, a members of the House Appropriations Committee, also voted Tuesday to bring the emergency spending bill before the full House. He called that measure imperfect but necessary.

“If someone’s out on the water waving their arms for help, they don’t expect the Queen Mary to come get them. They just want someone in a boat,” Pyle said.

He said Wolf’s conduct during budget negotiations was to blame for the impasse, which today equals the state’s modern day record of 176 days, set in 2003 under then-Gov. Ed Rendell.

“It’s like talking to a brick wall. It’s ‘my way or the highway’. That’s how kings behave. I don’t believe in kings,” Pyle said.

The long-standing disagreements between Wolf and Republicans in the House and Senate weren’t the only fractures on display this week. Republicans from both chambers were at loggerheads over a pension reform measure championed by Senate Republicans but voted down by conservative members of the House.

Sen. Don White, R-41st, took aim at Wolf and House Republicans for scuttling the Senate’s pension reform measure on Saturday. White said some members were being “disingenuous” and voting against the measure to preserve their own plans.

“I’m very disturbed,” White said. “It’s something that’s been the gorilla in the room since I’ve been in office. It’s absurd that we can’t tackle this problem, especially when we have a Republican majority in the House and the Senate.”

Sen. Elder Vogel, R-47th, called the state’s pension the major driver of costs in the state’s general fund budget, and the biggest reason school boards seek property tax increases. He criticized Wolf for failing to support an emergency spending bill.

“Funding for domestic violence shelters, food banks, and services for Pennsylvanians with disabilities should not be used as pawns in a game of political brinkmanship,” Vogel said in an e-mail statement.

Rep. Lee James, R-64th, said the budget proposal represented what’s wrong with the state’s long-running budget negotiations. Lee wants to see cuts, not just increased spending.

James said he was in favor of an emergency funding bill to bring short-term results for schools and social service agencies struggling with the lack of state money.

However, he said he doesn’t see that route as realistic. “The governor has already promised he would veto (a stopgap measure),” James said.

Neither does he see a budget resolution anytime soon.

“I don’t see it happening this month,” he said.

James said it appears the dysfunction between House and Senate members will continue, despite rank-and-file members being assured earlier this year that both chambers’ leaderships were intent on cooperation.

“In the summer we were told that for the first time in as much as 20 years, leadership was getting along,” James said. “Perhaps that was a fairy tale.”

He said members of the House were motivated by holding the line on taxes, though some “modders” would be OK with increases to “sin” taxes such as cigarette taxes or gambling taxes. James called an increase to the state’s personal income tax and sales tax “regressive,” and harmful to people with lower incomes.

Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-12th, who represents southern Butler County, said he opposes “any budget or emergency funding bill that necessitates tax increases.”

“I oppose the budget deal pushed by the governor and his state Senate accomplices because it would hike taxes by more than $1 billion annually,” Metcalfe said in an e-mail.

Metcalfe said the majority of his constituents have encouraged him to oppose tax increases, and he supports a budget similar to the one vetoed by Wolf this summer.

Sen. Scott Hutchinson, R-21st, who represents much of Butler County, called Wolf’s budget negotiation tactics “mercenary,” and said he supported the Senate’s attempt to reform the state’s pension system, though he added that the changes weren’t as comprehensive as he wanted to see.

Hutchinson said he won’t support a budget that includes a tax increase “of the scale or span demanded by the administration.”

“At this point I doubt anyone in Harrisburg can predict how and when this will finally end,” he said in an e-mail.