Gov. Cuomo’s Budget
New York’s lawmakers passed a $132.5 billion budget before the April 1 deadline, a rare event. That is, on the whole, a political win for Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who cut $10 billion out of it.
But the way he chose to do it will bring unnecessary pain to the less fortunate across the state, while allowing some of the richest residents to escape their share of the burden of a recession-era budget. Tellingly, legislators passed the 2011-12 budget behind locked doors early Thursday after angry protesters chanted in the Capitol corridors on Wednesday.
EDUCATION The final budget restores a small amount — $230 million — to the $23 billion allotted for state spending on K-12. Mr. Cuomo originally had wanted to cut that spending by $1.5 billion. But this is still a thoroughly regressive budget that hurts poorer school districts even more than the one initially proposed by the governor.
Consider this comparison between the wealthy Syosset school district in Nassau County and the downtrodden district of Ilion, in economically distressed Herkimer County upstate. Under the new budget, Ilion, which runs its schools on little more than $25 million a year, will lose nearly $1 million. Syosset, with a budget of more than $188 million, will receive a smaller cut of about $760,000.
New York City schools were also particularly shortchanged because their expected allocation of state aid of $6.2 billion was cut by $840 million. A rare bit of good news in this area: the governor’s proposed property tax cap is gone. It would have squeezed the poorer school districts already losing vital state money.
MEDICAID Mr. Cuomo’s cuts would reduce projected state and federal spending on Medicaid by more than $5 billion, a big but manageable number to absorb. The adjustments to Medicaid are mostly fair, as recommended by the Medicaid Redesign Team earlier this year.
The final budget wisely rejects a cap on malpractice awards for pain and suffering of $250,000. The way to deal with rising malpractice insurance costs is to work harder to stop malpractice. The budget also drops proposed increases in co-payments, which could discourage the needy from seeking medical help. A cap on the state share of Medicaid spending should rein in this part of the budget.
REVENUES The major flaw is on taxes. Mr. Cuomo and Senate Republicans decided to give a tax break to millionaires while cutting money for schools, the elderly, the poor and the sick. That’s inhumane and fiscally backward.
Individual New Yorkers earning more than $200,000 a year and married couples earning $300,000 pay a modest surcharge that expires in December. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver made some effort to extend the tax and should stick to his pledge to keep trying. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has complained so loudly about how the state budget hurts the city, should also support this tax. The governor has said he won’t approve any new tax, but this is an extension of taxes already being easily paid by the state’s most fortunate citizens.
THE COURTS Mr. Cuomo and the Legislature have agreed to cut the court system by an additional $70 million, for a total of $170 million. That portends delays and layoffs and threatens much-needed plans to expand legal services for low-income New Yorkers.
Perhaps most important, this budget does not tackle the huge costs of pensions and benefits to the state, New York City and other areas. It does not grant New York City the power it needs to negotiate its own pension deals with unions, rather than leaving them up to the Legislature. And it does not scale back state laws or mandates that cost local districts too much money.
Now that this miserly budget is officially done, Mr. Cuomo should push legislators to get back to work quickly on its shortcomings — as well as on real reform of redistricting and ethics laws.
The Truth About American Muslims
At the Justice Department, it’s called the post-Sept. 11 backlash — the steady stream of more than 800 cases of violence and discrimination suffered by American Muslims at the hands of know-nothing abusers. These continuing hate crimes were laid bare at a valuable but barely noticed Senate hearing last week that provided welcome contrast to Representative Peter King’s airing of his xenophobic allegation that the Muslim-American community has been radicalized.
Offering federal data rather than mythic scapegoating of an easy political target, the Senate hearing focused on the fact that while Muslims make up 1 percent of the population, they are victims in 14 percent of religious discrimination cases. These range from homicides and mosque burnings to job, school and zoning law abuses, according to the Justice Department.
In running the hearing, Senator Richard Durbin tried to set the record straight about the patriotism of a vast majority of American-Muslim citizens and the continuing assaults on their civil rights. He warned against the “guilt by association” whipped up by Mr. King’s broadsides — that there are “too many mosques” in the nation, that most of them are extremist, and that American Muslim leaders have failed to cooperate with law enforcement against home-grown terrorism.
It was former President George W. Bush who first warned against turning on Muslim Americans after Sept. 11, 2001, stressing the fact that Islam is “a faith based upon love, not hate,” regardless of the religious veneer the fanatics of 9/11 tried to attach to their atrocities. Since then, American Muslims have served as the largest source of tips to authorities tracking terror suspects, according to a recent university study.
The Senate hearing was not designed as a full refutation of Representative King’s wild thesis, but it put a more human and factual face on a community that has been badly slurred. Mr. King is promising more committee haymakers. This is unfortunate. At least Mr. Durbin’s hearing made clear that the nation’s struggle against terrorism is best served by information, not dark generalizations.
What Happened to ‘Zero Tolerance’?
A meeting of the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops is scheduled for June. It needs to repair the gaping holes uncovered in their “zero tolerance” mandate for priests suspected of sexually abusing children.
A grand jury report in February found that the Philadelphia archdiocese, for all its announced safeguards, allowed 37 suspect priests to remain in parish work. The indictment of a layman and four church figures — including a monsignor accused of covering up abuse — is proof that the bishops’ system of local and national review boards isn’t strong enough.
Board appointees are supposedly equipped to scrutinize each diocese’s adherence to zero tolerance. But the grand jury in Philadelphia found that the hierarchy there continued to protect accused priests despite repeated scandals and vows for reform.
The leader of the Philadelphia review board pointed to one major weakness: currently, any allegations about rogue priests are first vetted by chancery officials working for the archdiocese. They rightly should go directly to the review boards. This should be a universal no-brainer, along with stronger outside auditing of safeguard programs. Both were initially required, but the bishops subsequently eased that to a policy of “self-reporting” with audits every three years.
The haunting question is how many other Philadelphias may be out there.
A church review panel of laypeople formed in 2002 looked beyond zero tolerance for priests and warned that “there must be consequences” for bishops who engineered cover-ups. More than 700 priests had to be dismissed in a three-year period. But there has been nothing close to an accounting of bishops’ culpability in protecting predatory priests and paying hush money to contain complaints. This is a fact for the bishops to ponder at their June meeting alongside the shocking grand jury report.
Feeling Betrayed, a Furious Tea Party Shakes Its Fist at Both Political Parties
The cold March mist could not drench the piercing moral clarity on view Thursday afternoon at the Tea Party rally outside the Capitol, where a small crowd of the faithful gathered to save the country from compromisers.
There must be no bargaining when it comes to slashing government spending and ending government health care, according to a succession of activists and lawmakers who spoke into a P.A. system turned up far too loud. Not a single step backward, not an inch of ground lost.
Inside the building just behind the protesters, leaders of both parties were busy selling them out. To keep the government open and, more important, to avoid the blame of having it shut down, each party was contemplating giving up something it once considered precious to reach a deal. And that was unimaginable to the people at the rally, who prefer to think of their government as a sleek and pristine civics-book ideal, rather than the sweat-stained product of exhausting negotiation.
The sense that unreliable Republican leaders were giving away the store lent an air of shrill desperation to those trying to stop them, who built in volume into a bullhorn of negative fury.
Many of those present couldn’t decide whom they despised the most: subversive Democrats, who were occasionally compared to the nation’s historic enemies, or spineless Republicans, who had abandoned their post in the nation’s darkest hour.
“Taxation with representation ain’t much fun either,” read a sign held by Dee Meredith of Callao, Va., who said she was disgusted with the Republican establishment for not standing fast with Tea Party principles. If this backsliding continues, she predicted, many Tea Partiers will break with the Republicans in the next election and form a third party.
If so, some of the loudest Republican lawmakers who spoke at the rally will have a decision to make. All of them spoke vehemently against precisely the kinds of proposals now on the table: cutting $33 billion from this year’s budget, rather than $61 billion, and continuing to spend money on health care reform and Planned Parenthood.
“It’s time to pick a fight,” said Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, who just a few years ago was considered one of the more thoughtful Republicans on fiscal issues. “This far, and no further.”
In front of him, a sign bounced with the words “Grow a spine.” Another read, “Invertebrates and Congress cannot stand tall.” A man repeatedly called out, “Cut NPR!”
As was intended by its fervent sponsors, the rally brightly illustrated the division within a Republican Party that is being held together with Speaker John Boehner’s cellophane tape.
Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, said Thursday that a deal is in hand if Republicans can tune out the voices of the Tea Party. But Mr. Boehner cannot simply tune them out; he would not be speaker without them, and many lawmakers in his own caucus are trying to torpedo any talk of compromise. At some point in the next few days, he — and the very angry people who drove all night to raise their voices — will have to make a choice.
