On Wednesday, January 5, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) delivered a "State of the State" address to warn New Yorkers that big cuts are coming to their public services. According to him, New York's $9.2 billion budget deficit means policymakers have to slash things like health care and education spending. But it seems to me that before we go cutting kids off their field trips to the museum or their doctor's visits, we should start by looking for big chunks of money leaving New York state for useless purposes.
And it turns out there's a $9.6 billion stack of cash that's going to be sucked out of New York this year -- that's how much New York taxpayers will be charged for Afghanistan War spending this year.
That $9.6 billion is more than enough to fill the budget hole this year. New York has plenty of money to keep kids in school and to make sure they can see a doctor when they're sick or hurt. It's just that too many of the state's politicians just have broken priorities. Those broken priorities are reflected in the narrow majority of the state's federal congresspeople voting in favor of the latest war funding bill (14 voting "Yea," 13 voting "Nay"):
- Timothy H. Bishop (D)
- Steve Israel (D)
- Peter T. King (R)
- Carolyn McCarthy (D)
- Gary L. Ackerman (D)
- Michael McMahon (D)
- Eliot L. Engel (D)
- Nita M. Lowey (D)
- John Hall (D)
- Scott Murphy (D)
- William Owens (D)
- Michael Arcuri (D)
- Christopher J. Lee (R)
- Brian Higgins (D)
- Gregory W. Meeks (D)
- Joseph Crowley (D)
- Jerrold Nadler (D)
- Anthony D. Weiner (D)
- Edolphus Towns (D)
- Nydia Velazquez (D)
- Carolyn B. Maloney (D)
- Charles B. Rangel (D)
- Jose Serrano (D)
- Paul Tonko (D)
- Maurice D. Hinchey (D)
- Dan Maffei (D)
- Louise Slaughter (D)
- Defense: 8,555 jobs
- Construction for home weatherization/infrastructure: 12,804 jobs
- Health care: 12,883 jobs
- Education: 17,687 jobs
- Mass transit: 19,795 jobs
Since defense spending is one of the least economically stimulating ways to spend money, New Yorkers might as well have set that $9.6 billion on fire to watch it burn for all the good it will do the state.
If Governor Cuomo wants to avoid cutting school kids off of their educational opportunities and cutting poor kids off their doctor's visits, he might consider calling the congressional switchboard at 202.224.3121 and asking to have a word with the Members of Congress on the list of people above who voted "Yea" on funding for the Afghanistan War.