State lawmakers this week turned up the heat in Harrisburg but couldn’t get a Thanksgiving deal in the oven. Now the entire menu is in danger of falling apart.

“One of the blessings we cannot count on [this Thanksgiving] is a budget,” Gov. Tom Wolf said in a Philly.com report. “All I want is to restart the bipartisan framework we had agreed to.”

The latest drama centered around a proposal to provide promised property tax relief by eliminating school property taxes and replacing them with higher or more expanded sales and income taxes.

Lt. Gov. Mike Stack killed the idea with a tiebreaking vote against what would have ushered in “a unique, quantum change in the way we look at Pennsylvania,” fellow Democrat Sen. John Wozniak said in the Pottstown Mercury.

“If you have the ability to pay, then you should pay. But it should not be on the property tax, which is there whether you’re making a million dollars or you’re a widow on a fixed-income making $15,000.”

Wolf’s status report Monday characterized overall budget negotiations as in “deep peril.”

“In the end, the sides could not even agree on why their deal was falling apart, let alone how to save it,” Philly.com explained. “That sowed new confusion and uncertainty about the stalemate, which has stalled critical funding for schools, counties and nonprofit organizations.”

Read more about this week’s setback on Philly.com here and in the Pottstown Mercury here, and check out previous VISTA Today coverage of the growing budget impasse here.