Protect healthcare and education

As bad as the financial crisis will hit other states, New York's budget is bound to get hit the worst. That's because the state relies on Wall Street for about 20 percent of its revenues, and New York is already suffering substantial job losses from the financial meltdown, with more expected.

Even before the meltdown hit last week, Gov. David Paterson had told state agencies to draft zero-growth budgets and acknowledged the cuts the state made a few weeks ago to the approximately $120 billion budget weren't going to be enough to deal with a mounting $5.4 billion deficit. Paterson anticipates the state will face a deficit far beyond that number now.

The crisis does point to some simple truths that the state steadfastly has refused to recognize during the past decade, in particular: Deficits matter. So does the annual trend of spending well beyond the inflation rate.

Incredibly, state spending has risen by nearly 40 percent over the past five years — and has almost doubled over the last decade. Yes, state lawmakers have plowed considerable sums of money into two vitally important areas — health care and education — but made no real effort to cut in other areas, such as reducing the number of public authorities, consolidating prisons and cutting the state work force in general through attrition and retirements.

The state's failure to do this might force it to break promises on education spending and try to make cuts to health care. Before any of that happens, Paterson must hold down spending across state agencies and hold himself and legislators accountable to come up with other ways to cut the size and scope of government without crushing vital health care services and funding for education.

The Poughkeepsie Journal/AP