In a matter of about a week, the honeymoon that Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro was enjoying may have come to a dramatic end. Shapiro, who has been in office about 6½ months, was getting high marks for several initiatives including being the lead drumbeater for getting Interstate 95 up and running again after its collapse last month in Philadelphia.

It also appeared that he and members of the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives and the Republican-controlled Senate had forged an early agreement to pass the 2023-24 budget on time with a nice increase over the current budget that included much more spending going toward education equality.

The Republican-favored school voucher plan, which Democrats adamantly oppose, got Shapiro’s approval in what was called a handshake agreement. After all, this was a campaign pledge that Shapiro had made.

The disclosure instantly angered fellow Democrats, who had added more than $1 billion to the budget that Shapiro proposed earlier this year, much of it to grease education spending and to try to help distressed districts such as Panther Valley, Shenandoah Valley, Allentown and Bethlehem catch up to their peers.

Although budget negotiations are conducted in private, and it is difficult to know what exactly is going on, several reports from the negotiating room indicated that the Republicans went for the larger budget number in exchange for Shapiro’s support for the school voucher scholarship proposal.

Since members of his own party were so intensely opposed to the voucher proposal, Shapiro shifted gears and asked his party’s legislators to approve the higher-spending budget that passed the Senate with the voucher plan in it, then he would line-item veto the voucher proposal.

Saying he still supports the voucher proposal, Shapiro, who has shown himself to be a political pragmatist, said it was a fight for another day and “not worth putting Pennsylvanians through a painful, protracted budget impasse.”

Leaders of the Senate Republican majority, meanwhile, blasted the governor for deciding to “betray the good faith agreement we reached, leaving tens of thousands of children across Pennsylvania in failing schools.”

So while budget adoption is already 10 days late, completion of budget formalities are up in the air before Shapiro can sign the bill. The state Senate and House have passed the spending bill, but the Senate must complete the routine task of signing the measure during a legislative session day before it can go to Shapiro for his signature.

The delayed budget is not an immediate problem, but if it is still unsigned going into August it could delay payments to employees, vendors, etc.

The state Senate is not scheduled to reconvene until Sept. 18. Shapiro is urging the Senate to come back into session, but after they believed that Shapiro pulled the rug out from under them, the upper house’s leadership is not sure how to handle this yet. It’s revenge time, some GOP leaders angrily suggested.

Among House Republicans voting “no” on the budget-adoption plan last week were Reps. Zach Mako, R-Northampton and Lehigh, Doyle Heffley, R-Carbon, and Tim Twardzik, R-Schuylkill.

“I voted ‘no’ for a variety of reasons, including the fact that the governor betrayed the budget deal he had negotiated with the Senate Republicans,’’ Mako told his constituents in his weekly newsletter. Mako said the budget spends beyond what it should with a 6% increase over the current year, forcing the state to dip into its reserves to meet expenses. “We should be working to fix the structural deficit, not make it worse,” Mako said.

House Minority Appropriations Chair Seth Grove, R-York, said the current legislative session started with a lie from Rep. Mark Rozzi promising to serve as a nonpartisan speaker of the House and now continues with a lie from Shapiro.

“Gov. Shapiro should sign HB 611 with the inclusion of Lifeline Scholarships, as he promised. Failure to do so will result in a complete lack of trust between House and Senate Republicans and the House Democrats and the Governor,” Grove said.

Shapiro blamed Senate Republicans for the conflict. “They did not close a deal with their House counterparts,” he said, noting that the Senate chose to pass a budget that included vouchers, which leaders knew the House would not support.

After a fast start, it will be interesting to see whether Shapiro can extract himself from this uncomfortable position between a rock and a hard place.

By BRUCE FRASSINELLI| tneditor@tnonline.com

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.