In one of his novels, 19th cen tury British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli featured a politician “distinguished for ignorance” because in his entire career he had only one idea and that idea was wrong. This year’s Disraeli award may go to the state Republican senators — who wrongly believe that they’re boosting their chances of retaking the Senate this fall by opposing Gov. Paterson’s emergency budget bills and forcing the state government to shut down.
Paterson, belatedly attempting to address the state’s $9 billion operating deficit, has finally figured out that he has real power when it comes to driving the budget process. That’s because the system gives the executive branch the sole responsibility to draft a budget; the Legislature’s primary job is to appropriate money.
Hence, if the Legislature says “no” to Paterson’s emergency budget by refusing to approve funding by a given deadline, it becomes responsible for a government shutdown — not the governor. It would get the blame for state employees going unpaid, the Department of Motor Vehicles closing, checks to school districts being delayed and construction projects halting.
The lame-duck governor has apparently concluded that he has nothing to lose by taking on his own party in this ongoing budget battle. He’s insisted that until lawmakers agree to a long-term solution to the state’s fiscal woes, he will include incremental cuts in his weekly “budget extender” bills. His cuts so far have been small — about 11 percent of the deficit — but he has made it clear to the legislators that if they reject his reductions, the ensuing chaos will be on their heads.
Enter the Senate Republicans — who last week unanimously voted against Paterson’s funding resolution, complaining that they’d been excluded from the decision-making process and that Paterson’s $385 million in permanent health-spending cuts was merely a drop in the fiscal bucket.
The Republicans said they’d support the governor’s next emergency budget if he agreed to $747 million in specific health and human-services cuts. (That number includes $480 million in cuts from the budget Paterson sent to the Legislature in January.)
Yet Senate Minority Leader Dean Skelos made a (possibly fatal) mistake last week when he said: “Right now our conference believes that piecemeal budgeting is not the way to do it. If it means stopping things for a couple of days, then we’re prepared to do it.”
The Republicans are in the minority; they should relish the disarray within the ranks of the majority party and not make any moves that might reunite them. More, since they claim to believe in fiscal discipline, they should embrace the governor’s cuts, even if they believe they are token. If there is to be a government shutdown, let the Democrats be the ones to turn off the lights.
Albany Republicans should recall the events of late 1995, a year after the “Republican Revolution” in Congress. When the so-called “irrelevant President” Bill Clinton called the Republicans’ bluff and vetoed their appropriation bills, thus causing the shutdown of the non-emergency functions of the federal government, all hell broke loose. The American people blamed House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole for the mess and in 1996 Clinton became the first Democrat since FDR in 1936 to win re-election to the presidency.
Similarly, if Gov. Paterson and Sen. Pedro Espada force Skelos to carry out his threat, his membership could be portrayed as the obstructionists — with angry, over-taxed voters punishing the Republicans in November and relegating them to permanent minority status.
In short, Skelos’ troops are on the verge of taking on all the risks of control with none of the power. If they stick to such foolish politics, they’ll wind up earning that Disraeli award.
George J. Marlin, former Port Au thority executive director, is the au thor of “Squandered Opportunities: New York’s Pataki Years.”