New York Budget Deficit

The budget of New York is facing a major budget shortfall for the 2008-2009 fiscal year, approximately $12 Billion Dollars. That is by almost any standard a huge ammount of money. That is more than 14% of the 2007-2008 budget, which does not account for inflation. So unlike every other year in the recent past it seems the New York Budget will have to shrink instead of growing.



Unfortunatly, there seems to be little agreement on what to do in Albany, even when only dealing with this years much smaller deficit. Govenor Patterson has proposed a number of cuts, but each special intrest rallied to protect its share of the money. If we are to deal with next years problems much action must be taken.



Politically the easy way out is to call for cutting things like member items, however this is a poorly thought out plan, these member items, while they may be misspent make up relatively little of the state budget, not nearly enough to even make a dent in this huge shortfall. This process certainly needs to be reformed, but it will not solve this crisis.



As much as we may hate it, the true answer lies in cutting medicaid and schools. These two areas each make up more than one quarter of the state budget, and therefore, much of the burden must fall on them. Perhaps the formula by which school aid is allocated so that schools that are more well off and doing better can get a greater reduction so that the schools who need the money more can get a lesser cut. Legislators in Albany who have long defended there districts share of the pie need to look beyond to the state's problems as a whole. Perhaps medicaid can save money on both sides of the equations, first, by slightly increasing the co-pay they ask the participants to pay, second, by decreasing the pay out to the doctors, hospitals and surgeons.

Another solution we must consider, however much we would like to avoid it is raising taxes. New York has some of the highest taxes in the nation, and during tough economic times raising taxes seems like one of the worst things we could do. Some propose taxing the wealth, however, the rich, unlike some other groups can easily relocate to another state. Perhaps another solution would be to increase taxes slightly across the board, and close some tax loopholes. Despite the possibilty of increased tax revenues, I feel that cutting spending is the better solution

These are not the only areas that can be cut, but as they make up the largest share of our budget, it is nearly impossible to balance the budget without decreasing them. We cannot decive ourselves, these cuts will be painful, however, they must be made.