#Cuomo’s ‘budget’ rant was the opposite of ‘leadership’

Gov. Andrew Cuomo was supposed to lay out his budget for the coming fiscal year Tuesday, but instead he just ranted about Washington, demanded it hand over $15 billion and threatened pain — and a lawsuit — if it doesn’t. This, from the guy who just wrote a book on leadership.

“If Washington doesn’t provide New York state with our $15 billion fair share, we will pursue litigation,” he huffed. If the feds send “only” $6 billion, he says he’ll slash funding for schools, health care and municipalities — and hike taxes on both the wealthy and the middle class, putting the top income-tax rate at nearly 15 percent, the nation’s highest. Oh, he’ll borrow more, too.

Cuomo’s tirade was the exact opposite of leadership: a monumental exercise in buck-passing. He even blamed Team Trump for the virus: “The COVID assault was caused by federal negligence,” he insisted, as if the entire world hasn’t faced an unstoppable pandemic.

COVID has fundamentally changed New York’s long-term economic and fiscal picture, yet Cuomo wants Uncle Sam to hold the state harmless, as if nothing happened. Indeed, with “only” $6 billion in new federal money, state-funded spending would still grow, by 1.2 percent, under his $193 billion budget.

As Empire Center fiscal expert E.J. McMahon notes, getting $15 billion from DC would be “just a Band-Aid”: It’d let the state put off facing its long-term problems as they grow worse.

Even Cuomo’s right-hand man, Budget Director Robert Mujica, couldn’t make the gov’s lawsuit threat stand up. He first said (preposterously) that it would be based on the fact that the feds should’ve known the coronavirus would come to New York, but then later said it would be over Congress’ 2017 cap on the federal tax deduction for state and local levies — though New York has already sued over that. And lost.

Cuomo knows tax hikes would hamper the post-COVID economic recovery and spur more wealthy taxpayers to flee. But he shies from the hard work of reining in spending by, say, bringing per-student school outlays more in line with the rest of America, scrapping wasteful “economic-development” slush funds and cutting back on overly ambitious public construction projects.

Apparently, “leadership” is about whining, not facing facts..