EDITORIALS
Passing the buck
State Legislature does nothing, hopes for a duty-dodging bailout
If you squint at it while whistling a chorus of “High Hopes” as you walk past a graveyard, you can see why New York State legislators did nothing — not a blessed thing — last week to deal with the record budget deficit yawning before the state’s overburdened taxpayers.
Mainly, of course, they are cowards, afraid of offending their political overseers and, simultaneously, of taking responsibility for a budget that is dangerously unbalanced.
What they claim, though — and not without a morsel of reason — is that they passed the cup because they are sure the pending administration of President-elect Barack Obama will look favorably on a new stimulus package that will send oodles of dollars to the states. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N. Y., believes that, as well.
In particular, New York’s elected officials hope Washington will send the state a big increase in Medicaid funding on the grounds that the state is reimbursed at a lower level than others.
There is some truth to that, but New York also runs the country’s most expensive Medicaid program, and expecting more federal dollars necessarily means expecting taxpayers in more sensibly governed states to subsidize New York’s excesses even more than they do now. Oops, there goes another problem, kerplop.
It’s also true, as the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan annually observed, that New York is a net donor to the federal government, delivering to it tens of billion more dollars than it gets back. But, to some extent, that’s the way of things. Western New York gets more state dollars than it pays to Albany, because it is a poorer, economically weaker part of the state.
Still, it’s not insensible to want to see what Washington will do, especially since New York’s revenue problem was largely caused by the federal government’s lax oversight of Wall Street. But even that shouldn’t have precluded our weak-kneed Legislature from taking some little bit of serious action on a deficit that will remain astronomically high, whatever steps the next president and Congress may take. Are there no grown-ups in the Legislature?
Perhaps there are. Sen. Malcolm A. Smith of Queens, the chamber’s presumptive leader when Democrats become the majority in January, observed last week that Washington would likely be more generous with New York if the state first took action to address its own problems. Imagine that: Demonstrate a measure of responsibility before expecting a federal handout. That’s the way to move a rubber tree plant.
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