New York budget to slash health, education spending

[Hannah Bell]

New York State’s Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo, publicly presented his proposed state budget earlier this month for the fiscal year beginning on April 1. The budget proposal develops themes outlined in his State of the State message delivered several weeks earlier, focusing on devastating cuts in health care and education spending.

Echoing the message being pronounced by state governors and county and municipal officials across the country, Cuomo declared that the state government has been spending beyond its means. “New York State is functionally bankrupt,” “there is no money,” and “painful choices” involving drastic cuts in expenditures are necessary, according to the governor, but the wealthy must not be disturbed.

Cuomo made no reference to the fact that the crisis a direct consequence of Wall Street’s near-total collapse two years ago, or that the financial aristocracy’s fortunes have now rebounded dramatically due to the injection of hundreds of billions of dollars in public funds.

Cuomo’s heaviest cuts are aimed at health care and education. There would be an immediate $982 million reduction in Medicaid, the program that provides medical assistance to the poor and disabled, the effects of which would be doubled due to the loss of federal matching funds. An even larger cut, projected to total $2.85 billion, is to be developed by Cuomo’s newly appointed Medicaid Redesign Team. This panel is mandated to redesign the program to make it more “efficient,” which inevitably will mean a drastic reduction in the quantity and quality of care provided. Cuts of another $4.57 billion are projected for the following fiscal year.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/feb2011/cuom-f17.shtml