Spending from Albany will continue without abatement
A COLUMN by NY State Senator Tom O’Mara
Can every New Yorker find something to like about the newly enacted state budget? Of course. It spends nearly $270 billion. It floods this state with taxpayer dollars.
And that, in my view, is what’s most troubling about it. The new budget accelerates what’s already been a seven-year flood of taxpayer dollars pouring out of Albany – and it’s an out-of-control spending flood threatening to drown this state in red ink.
The truth is that it’s threatening to do a lot worse than that.
This final budget was forced through and enacted under a process that’s broken and that leaves most legislators and especially the public at large still not knowing everything that’s in it. Believe me, we’ll be hearing surprising details on what Democrats have snuck into this spending plan for weeks to come.
For starters, though, the final 2026-2027 New York State budget enacted by Governor Kathy Hochul and the Legislature’s Democrat majorities late last week is out of touch with the affordability crisis crushing New York’s state and local taxpayers, and their families and communities and local economies. I have remained critical of the final plan for its continued focus on spending that is out of control, for its reliance on a broken budget adoption process, and for its failure to move New York in a better, more responsible direction economically, fiscally, and on public policy priorities in fundamentally key areas including energy, health care, and public safety and security.
All of the above deserve attention and I’ll be doing that throughout the weeks and months ahead. For this week’s purposes, however, it’s critical to focus on the bottom line: out-of-control spending. That is what should keep everyone up at night. It’s going to keep haunting all of us. Do not forget this about the new, nearly $270-billion plan:
- It increases spending by at least $14 billion over last year, meaning that spending under all-Democrat control in this state since 2019 has increased by 55%, or nearly $100 billion. It’s unprecedented and it shows no signs of stopping. It also means that New York State will face multi-billion-dollar budget deficits for years to come.
- It increases Medicaid spending alone by $11 billion or roughly 8.5%. But that’s nothing new in New York. Medicaid spending now gobbles up nearly one-half of the entire state budget. Nearly one-half. Under Governor Hochul and this all-Democrat Legislature, state spending on Medicaid has increased 90%. It’s the highest Medicaid spending per resident of any state in America. And yet, this budget takes no new actions, not one, to redouble the state’s efforts to root out the abuse, fraud, and waste that everyone knows plagues the system and costs taxpayers billions.
- It does nothing meaningful or permanent to alleviate the fears of ratepayers who already can’t afford the ever-escalating costs of energy in this state. It merely kicks the can a few years down the road. Still there is no plan nor requirement for a cost-benefit analysis, nor a feasibility-reliability analysis. Albany Democrats boast a one-time rebate gimmick of $100-$200 per household (and get this – it’s regardless of whether you are even a ratepayer) that, in the absence of other reforms, will amount to pennies for ratepayers, most of whom will not even receive what their monthly increase has been after already shelling out billions paying for the Democrats’ pursuit of a failing climate agenda that as it stands (and will effectively continue to stand as a result of this budget) will never be affordable, feasible, or reliable.
This fiscal recklessness jeopardizes the future of individual New Yorkers and their families, as well as the future strength of this state as a whole.
A statewide poll earlier this month from the Siena Research Institute showed that more than 70 percent of respondents believed the state’s fiscal condition is fair or poor. The survey also found 75% of respondents reporting that the cost of utilities was having a “serious impact on their financial condition.” Fifty-one percent said their bills for heating and electricity are unaffordable, with nearly 30 percent admitting that they have been forced to borrow money or take on debt to cover utility costs.
New York State taxpayers today and long into the future already face trying to afford, live, and work under a bloated, wasteful, and unaffordable state government. This budget makes it worse.
It ignores the economic and fiscal warnings on the horizon.
It acts like New York taxpayers and families shouldn’t have a care in the world in the face of the worst affordability crisis they have ever faced. It’s a budget built on bailouts and giveaways to special interests and favored constituencies that everyday taxpayers will never be able to afford.
It acts like the need to cut taxes, eliminate unfunded mandates, restrain overregulation, reduce debt and control borrowing, make this state more economically competitive, and other commonsense fiscal and economic practices will never again be priorities.
For the past seven years under one-party, all-Democrat control, New York’s taxpayers, families, and job creators have been telling us that this state is on the wrong track and that they can no longer afford to live, work, raise a family, or start a small business here.
And for the past seven years, as the affordability crisis has increasingly worsened, Albany Democrats have just kept spending more and taxing more. They’ve essentially said, ‘We don’t care.’”
There’s no denying any longer that the far-left faction of the current Democratic Party in New York State continues to gain increasingly powerful footholds at the highest levels of New York government at both the state and local levels, especially in the big cities, and particularly in New York City. They continue to drive an agenda that demands more spending and more taxing. It’s an agenda that is driving people and employers – from Main Street to Wall Street — out of this state.
During one of the budget debates last week on the Senate floor, a leading far-left Democrat proclaimed, defiantly, that this budget doesn’t go nearly far enough to tax more and spend more, and that he and his far-left colleagues across New York are determined that the day will come when it finally does.
“We’re just getting started,” he said.
If that’s where we’re headed in this state, if we continue to be governed under all-Democrat, complete one-party control, where traditional checks and balances don’t exist, it’s bad news for New York. In fact, it’s worse than that.
