Tomorrow, NCPR will broadcast Governor David Paterson’s state of the state address live at 1pm. <\/p>\n
If Mr. Paterson is straight with the public — as he has been in recent months — he’ll paint a pretty gloomy picture. <\/p>\n
Even after sizable cuts in this fiscal year, New York state faces an $8 billion dollar deficit in 2010. <\/p>\n
(To put that number in context, it’s enough money to hire roughly 80,000 school teachers. So you can see how painful the deficit-cutting effort will be.)<\/p>\n
As we wait for the bad news, too many politicians and too many editorial pages are pretending that our problem is bad government.<\/p>\n
The message goes something like this: If we only clean up the waste, get rid of the frivolous spending and fraud, we’ll be fine. <\/p>\n
Cut through all that famous New York red tape and there will be plenty of money to go around.<\/p>\n
Don’t believe it.<\/p>\n
The problem we face isn’t that we have too much bad government. That would be easy. Our curse is that we have too much good government.<\/p>\n
From mental health programs to nursing homes to public hospitals. From village police departments to fleets of snow plows to school teachers.<\/p>\n
The overwhelming majority of our taxpayer dollars go to great causes, helping people, improving lives, and easing the struggles of our poorest, most vulnerable citizens. <\/p>\n
The painful truth is, we’re about to have less of that goodness. Probably a lot less. <\/p>\n
Which is why it’s important to have an honest discussion of where we go next. <\/p>\n