HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf said Thursday he is hoping for a budget deal for the state fiscal year that is already halfway over before it’s time for him to deliver a budget plan for the next fiscal year.

Wolf is scheduled to deliver his next budget proposal Feb. 9, but could not say how he will handle it.

“I’ll have to decide when I get there and based on what’s in place,” Wolf said. “I’m still holding out hope that the compromise budget of 2015-16 gets into place.”

But even some of Wolf’s allies in the Republican-controlled Legislature say they believe the political will to increase taxes has dissipated with the approach of the primary campaign season, and GOP leaders have not budged from insisting on their priorities before approving a tax increase.

Wolf said he is not ready to buy the idea that sealing a budget deal is politically impossible before the April 26 primary election. Rather, it would be better politically for lawmakers to tell voters they had finalized a budget package, Wolf said.

“I’m not sure they’re going to have a good story to tell” if they face voters in the midst of a budget stalemate, he said.

Wolf had sought a tax increase to narrow funding disparities between Pennsylvania’s wealthier and poorer school districts and to try to erase a long-term deficit. But the House GOP’s budget package was $500 million short of what Wolf sought.

House Majority Leader Dave Reed, R-Indiana, said Wolf and lawmakers could try, for now, to pass a balanced budget simply to get through the fiscal year that ends June 30.

Then they could use the ensuing months to resolve differences over a litany of largely Republican policy pursuits that were attached to the budget package, Reed said.