Leadership Quote by Ed Rendell

A promise to “continue to phase out” a tax is the politician’s version of a soft launch: it signals direction without staking everything on a single do-or-die vote. Rendell’s phrasing does two jobs at once. It reassures business interests and economic moderates that he’s committed to reducing what many companies treat as a penalty for simply existing in Pennsylvania, while also cushioning himself against the fiscal reality that you can’t just rip out a revenue stream overnight without blowing a hole in budgets.

The repeated “consistently” isn’t casual; it’s an inoculation. Rendell is preempting the charge that he’s triangulating or reinventing himself for a general election. By pointing to “my papers and my speeches,” he’s invoking a paper trail as character evidence: I’ve been saying this, you can verify it, you can trust it. The parenthetical “which you heard in the primary campaign” tightens the loop, reminding voters (and rivals) that this isn’t a new concession to donors but an already-auditioned position that survived intra-party scrutiny.

“Phase out” is the subtextual star. It’s incrementalism packaged as resolve. It promises movement, not disruption; reform, not upheaval. In a state where tax policy is always a proxy war over jobs, municipal funding, and who gets blamed when services thin out, Rendell is signaling pro-growth instincts while keeping an escape hatch: if revenues dip, the pace can slow, and the promise can still be technically “continued.”