The Pennsylvania Senate has come back from the weekend bearing a gift for the budget-starved commonwealth, but it remains to be seen whether the House of Representatives will view the $30.8 billion budget bill passed Monday as a precious early Christmas present or a bad white elephant gift.

“This is a budget that the Senate can pass and the governor can sign,” Majority Leader Jake Corman said in a Penn Live report, “… and allows us to move forward on the issues that the people of Pennsylvania want us to move forward on.”

In lieu of a broad — and unpopular with Republicans — expansion of the sales tax, the Senate bill socks cigarettes with the biggest punch and also involves a banking tax change in order to fund “the largest raw-dollar, single-year increase in K-12 funding in the state’s history … and 5 percent increases in state grants to public colleges and universities,” Penn Live explained, quoting ranking appropriations Democrat Sen. Vince Hughes.

The final education funding number in the proposal, approved 43-7, was $350 million. The deal also reduces the gap between revenues and expenses, and restores some previously-cut human services.

The bill will now move to the House on Wednesday at the earliest, per Capitol rules.

Read more about the Senate’s stab at a solution to the budget impasse on Penn Live here, and check out previous VISTA Today coverage of the ongoing crisis here.