State lawmakers must be smoking some of that wacky tobacky they legalized, because the one-house budget bills they passed this week are utterly off the rails.
The bills came in response to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s spending scheme and upped her $233 billion bottom line by a jaw-dropping $13 billion.
Lawmakers are looking to shell out nearly a quarter of a trillion bucks — $246 billion — for the state fiscal year starting April 1.
It’s pure madness — an Olympic leap of $73 billion, or about 42%, over just five years ago.
Heck, Bidenflation looks tame by comparison: Prices have risen “only” 23% in that time.
But then, money grows on trees, right?
Much of the lawmakers’ outlays would go to the state’s education and health care industries, whose unions lord over Albany lawmakers.
The Assembly, for example, adds a whopping $5.1 billion to Hochul’s $45.8 billion for the state Education Department.
Both houses add billions to Medicaid spending, rejecting even the gov’s modest curbs to a runaway multibillion-dollar personal care aide program that’s seen massive fraud and soared 1,200% since 2016.
Never mind that New York’s per-capita Medicaid costs are the highest of any state, and 70% above the national average, per the Empire Center — totaling $83.4 billion in 2022.
And some of lawmakers’ “smaller” tack-ons are full-on drunken-sailor:
- $80 million for a new “Cannabis Rescue and Relief Fund” to help the weed industry — even while lawmakers refuse to make it easier to close illegal pot shops, which would help legal sellers.
- $10 million for toll-free calls for inmates — even as the Assembly would defund state police vehicles and equipment to fight retail theft by $7.4 million.
- $10 million for a minority- and women-owned business startup venture capital fund.
- $5.1 million for “various labor initiatives” (read: pork).
- $175 million for health care for illegal migrants.
The legislation is also filled with all kinds of new tax hikes and other tools to suck in more cash for their profligate plans.
Yet Albany faces more than $15 billion in red ink over just the next few years.
The tax hikes will only speed up the exodus of taxpaying New Yorkers; they won’t come close to closing the gaps.
The radical takeover of the Legislature over the past few years has subjected New Yorkers to enormous misery — from the growth of crime, to the ever-present stench of pot, to the explosion of homeless and mentally ill people on the streets.
If the Democratic majorities get even a fraction of what they’re seeking, you can add a looming budget crisis to that.
