Tuesday, March 13, 2012

From Via Meadia: NY Suicide Caucus Votes Down Cuomo Pension Reform


NY Suicide Caucus Votes Down Cuomo Pension Reform

If you needed more proof that arithmetic-deficient politicians and dysfunctional government are largely to blame for the disastrous state of New York's finances, Albany Democrats have just supplied it.

New York's Assembly Democrats have voted down Governor Cuomo's pension reform plan, hammering yet another nail into the state's financial coffin. The Assembly refused Cuomo's suggestion to raise the retirement age from 62 to 65 even though the governor stressed that his plan would save hundreds of billions of dollars in costs toward a pension plan expected to consume 35 percent of the government's budget by 2015. In 2001, it was 3 percent.

Cuomo is a canny politician and is vested with strong executive powers; he has hinted that he may still push his plan through by forcing a government shutdown and implementing pension reform by supra-legislative means. But his common sense – he makes his case by explaining that without pension reform, now, thousands of public employees will be laid off, once the state's funds run dry – isn't enough to keep New York's legislature focused on the needs of the people they allegedly serve.

Wars against arithmetic don't end well.

Original Page: http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/03/13/ny-suicide-caucus-votes-down-cuomo-pension-reform/

No comments:

Post a Comment