Democrat & Chronicle: Editorials
    Like New Jersey, New York soon could face a fiscal crisis

    (July 6, 2006) — Tempting as it may be for New York state lawmakers to become smug amid the budget crisis New Jersey is confronting, there’s still little for them to crow about.

    Actually, it’s beginning to look as if the legislative dysfunction that has come to characterize Albany is infectious. Lawmakers next door in New Jersey are demonstrating they, too, can be every bit as incapable of getting the job done effectively.

    New Jersey’s Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine called the Democrat-controlled Legislature into special session on July 4th to solve a state budget impasse. But to no avail, as most of the day was spent jostling. For instance, a Democratic leader shouted profanities on the Assembly floor, and in a fit of anger threw a wad of paper on a desk, startling a fellow lawmaker.

    At issue is whether to increase the state’s sales tax from 6 percent to 7 percent as Corzine proposes, or jack up already high property taxes. As a result of the impasse, the state has furloughed its 45,000 employees, and its lucrative gambling industry has been shut down at a cost to the state of more than $3 million a day.

    All of this was triggered by a $4.5 billion shortfall in Corzine’s $31 billion proposed budget. In contrast, New York’s Medicaid budget alone is $45 billion.

    New Jersey’s predicament pales somewhat when it’s considered that New York state lawmakers two weeks ago signed off on a record $113 billion state budget that represented a 10 percent increase over 2005 spending. And get this: During the final days alone of the session, lawmakers added $1 billion in spending.

    At the current rate, spending in New York is projected to grow by at least 10 percent in each of the next two years, says the Empire Center for New York State Policy.

    New Yorkers should keep all of this in mind in the fall as they cash rebate checks averaging $300. The budget crisis that New Jersey’s experiencing is on its way.

$300 to buy the votes of taxpayers and 1.7 Billion to the unions for their endorsements, their soldiers to get signatures, their money to buy commercials smearing candidates like me, their votes and of course the promise of more union gifts to come.

Pitiful, truly pitiful and should be illegal.
The debt that this budget alone will kill us for years to come.