Details of possible New York shutdown emerge
New York State government could shut down Tuesday at 12:01 a.m. if the state legislature doesn’t approve Gov. Paterson’s latest “extender” by then. Extenders are those weekly provision the state has operated under since the April deadline for a new budget went by. No extender, no way to pay the bills.
Paterson’s last extender included over $700 million in health care spending cuts. Including those “new” cuts in a bill to extend the old budget was an unprecedented, controversial move. A desperate measure for a desperate time, the governor said.
Lawmakers reluctantly went along with him, but as this week ends, the governor is proposing $300 million in cuts to mental hygiene and human services in his next extender, and lawmakers are sounding less compliant.
So, theoretically, it could happen. HOW it would take shape is beginning to emerge. Anonymous sources told the AP that agencies were being prepped in a conference call yesterday. Today, agency memos are beginning to circulate in Albany. The Times Union blog, Capitol Confidential, posted a DOT memo, and readers are responding with memos from other departments — DOH, Labor, DEC and others.
I’ll be talking with our Albany reporter, Karen DeWitt first thing during the 8 O’clock Hour Monday morning to see what’s up as the week begins.
but i really disagree that we’re seeing the e.u.’s tab coming due for their spending! there’s a great case to be made that greece is in trouble because of poor fiscal management (too much spending and too few tax revenues collected), but i really don’t think that applies to spain. again, they were doing everything right but then got caught in a tough situation when their real estate bubble burst. i think the real source of their problems now is that they can’t float their currency against the rest of europe because they’re on the euro with everyone else.
you may well be right that the “european tradeoff” wouldn’t be popular in the u.s. i for one would like to see us move more in the european direction.
HT, it seemed you implied that. If you didn’t mean that then I was mistaken. But you give the impression you link high taxation with gov’t spending and thus job growth, you do that in your response too. I don’t think that adds up. I’m saying the “job growth” was simply off setting the “job loss” of the earlier decade. Maybe I’m not getting my idea across. How much NEW job creation was there compared to refilling old slots, so to speak. IOW, it has always baffled me that the gov’t brags on job creation when they ignored the losses, just as they use “first time unemployment applicants” to figure the UE rate, but they ignore the long time applicants, repeat applicants and those who just stop looking.
I’m sorry, I guess I’m taking this off on a tangent.
PNElba- You didn’t know anyone who was unemployed at that time so no one was unemployed? I guess we’re both guilty of exaggeration then. Let me rephrase that then- In ’83 when I got out of the Corps there were very, very few jobs available with driving range of my home area (Glens Falls area) available to anyone with my job skills and not a registered Democrat. Many, many people I knew of at that time were in the same boat. Fortunately I had some savings, some supportive family and a real good recipe for Muskrat meatloaf.