SPITZER & SUOZZI: ABOVE THE LAW? - New York Post Online Edition: Postopinion
    The Democratic gubernatorial debate Tuesday between Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi was a business-as-usual affair: Puffed-up reporters asking shallow questions, eliciting meaningless answers from the candidates.

    How Spitzer managed to keep a straight face through it all - he’s up in the latest primary poll, 78 percent to 9 percent - is a mystery. He must’ve been wearing his game face, like all good lawyers do.

    And it was on a point of law that the evening’s only truly useful nugget of information emerged.

    The candidates were asked whether they would enforce the federal law that went into effect July 1, mandating that states require proof of citizenship from Medicaid applicants.

    Spitzer responded: “I would not enforce that provision . . . I do not believe that it is the role of the state to be transformed into one big I.N.S. agent.”

    Spitzer added that he’d be prepared to issue an executive order similar to one in New York City, where municipal employees are forbidden to ask about an individual’s immigration status.

    Suozzi has been boasting about his “reform” credentials - particularly on Medicaid - and how his experience in an executive position makes him different than Spitzer. But this was his answer:

    “I’ve always been a very strong supporter of immigrant rights and continue to be so . . . [We should] not try and take over the role of the federal government to enforce their laws. It’s inappropriate, I believe, for local officials, whether it’s police officers or Medicaid applicant recipients or anyone else in the state government, to take over the job of federal officials.”

    Let’s translate this into plain English, if you will.

    Both men said it would be their policy to ignore the law of the land. That’s a staggering admission, especially coming from Spitzer - who is at present New York’s chief law-enforcement officer and who, barring a cataclysmic event, will be New York’s next governor.

    What other federal laws does he intend to ignore?

    Congress, after all, has every right to set eligibility criteria for entitlements; it determined that only legal immigrants have a right to Medicaid access.

    Given that Washington ponies up a major chunk of the $44.5 billion New York will spend on Medicaid this year, its claim on setting eligibility requirements seems solid on the merits.

    And we don’t doubt that if Washington chooses to make an issue of it, Washington will win.

    But the real issue, again, is the contempt for law demonstrated by men seeking New York’s highest elective office.

    Shocking.

    Simply shocking.

Spitzer responded: “I would not enforce that provision …..I do not believe that it is the role of the state

It is the role of the state!!!! Billions of federal dollars come into the state to fund the medicaid system. Albany refuses to do anything about the ever increasing costs of this program and now these two candidates will refuse to enforce the Law?

Spitzer is the top law enforcement officer, he should be enforcing this right now. What is with these people? They allow illegals to register to vote, they allow illegals to collect welfare, food stamps, rent payments, heap, college tuition, schooling, medicaid etc…… Ya think they are catering to a voter block of people?