Who are the winners and losers in the final Pa. budget bargain?

By Zack Hoopes, pennlive.com

After 19 weeks of a budget impasse that affected many areas of life among Pennsylvanians, the short-term political problems have been solved through a series of give-and-take compromises. The long-term political problems remain.

The quick version of this year’s budget impasse is that Democrats offered to come down from Gov. Josh Shapiro’s original budget request, which featured $51.5 billion in general fund spending, but were leery of going too far below the $50 billion mark and cutting into the bone of programs they’ve championed.

Republicans were adamant that Shapiro’s budget framework ran an excessive deficit and would result in runaway spending, passing a flat-funded budget bill of $47 to $48 billion multiple times to make the point.

In the final couple