EDITORIAL: Push comes to budge: Cuomo must hold the line on spending in budget talks with the Assembly and Senate

March 17-- Mar. 17--In its first year behind the wheel of the budget bus, the all-Democratic state Legislature is not keeping its eyes on the winding road.

As tax revenues are taking a dive, the predictable result of a federal tax law that's walloping high-tax states like ours, both the Assembly and Senate have put out financial plans too rich for taxpayers' blood.

Both would hike aid on education by 6% to $28.4 billion, going more than $600 million above Gov. Cuomo's executive budget increase of $1 billion on the single biggest thing the state spends money on.

This, despite overall school spending that's already risen by 41%, or twice the rate of inflation, over the past decade, to a tops-in-the-nation per-pupil average of more than $25,000.

As a Citizens Budget Commission analysis points out, focusing $164 million in new aid on 32 low-wealth districts with students in need and/or growing enrollment would help kids -- without throwing ever more money at districts that don't need it.

Meantime, neither the Assembly nor the Senate would touch unsustainably expensive health insurance plans for retirees; the governor aims to cap Medicare reimbursement and make benefits less generous for new employees.

And though the Senate would, to its credit, make permanent the property tax cap -- a Cuomo innovation that has kept spending growth in relative check, holding down levies that are the bane of many homeowners' existence outside the five boroughs -- the Assembly would speed right through that yield sign, too.

Assembly, Senate and governor agree on increasing taxes on the very wealthiest New Yorkers, albeit using different mechanisms. We're fine with a tax on the second homes of the ultra-wealthy, on which all agree. No need to simultaneously raise an already-significant millionaire's tax, though, as the Assembly would, and risk losing to warmer climes some of the taxpayers who, nudged by federal tax-law changes, are already looking for an excuse to leave. We all depend upon their revenue.

Fortunately, though legislators and the governor share responsibilities here, the governor's the only one whose right foot reaches the brakes. He'll have to slam it down.

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