March 16, 2007
BUDGET BROUHAHA
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Hannon (left) and Gottfried (right) hold Health chairs; Englebright (center) helms Assembly Aging |
Senate and Assembly majorities passed one-house budget bills in Albany this week, kicking off intense negotiations towards a final budget deal that’s supposed to be completed in the next two weeks.
It may be tough to get to “yes” if tempers continue to flare as they did Wednesday, when Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno and Governor Eliot Spitzer teed off on one another in an expletive-filled shouting match that sent a Spitzer secretary fleeing for cover (according to Senate sources).
The Assembly Democratic majority included a 10 percent increase in welfare grants in their budget bills – that’s the first hike in basic survival grants for the very poor in nearly 20 years. And they stood up for low-income, formerly homeless parents living with HIV/AIDS and disabled children, by including in their budget resolution a demand for “SSI invisibility” for several hundred households that get the AIDS emergency shelter allowance.
Senate Republicans added over $3 billion in spending to Spitzer’s budget plan, despite a binding agreement that only $575 million in new spending could be accomplished during budget talks.
The bulk of Senate “adds” went to big hospitals, nursing homes, HMOs and health worker unions threatened by Governor Spitzer’s health care proposals; most of the rest went to high-income taxpayers and profitable corporations.
Details on the Assembly budget plan here, and on the Senate budget plan here.
Health hassles
On health care (perhaps the most difficult area to work out), the Assembly pretty much split the difference between Governor Spitzer’s effort to trim the rate of spending increases and the Senate’s move to give big health care interests almost everything they’re looking for.
Assembly Health Committee chair Dick Gottfried (D-Chelsea) outlined key points of difference at budget conference committee hearings Wednesday and Thursday.
Key points: the Assembly restored a cost-of-living “trend factor” for big health care providers, and moved to end a “hospital tax” Spitzer wants to continue. The Assembly also moved to block the Governor’s attempt to add antidepressants to the Medicaid Preferred Drug List (PDL) and to add cost as a factor in clinical guidelines.
Senate negotiators, led by Senate Health chair Kemp Hannon (R-Hempstead), approved the PDL changes but want to stop just about everything else the Governor’s fighting for in health care cost containment. Both the Senate and Assembly budgets would also block Spitzer’s modest reduction in pharmacy reimbursements.
What’s the endgame?
It’s not at all clear that this year’s state budget will be finished on time.
Though all sides want to meet their constitutional obligation to pass a budget by April 1, Senate Majority Leader Bruno has powerful incentives to drag his heels for a few weeks or months.
Spitzer and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver aren’t too far away from one another in their positions; they could probably work out their differences in a couple of days. But Bruno is on another budget planet, and his most important political supporters – Local 1199/SEIU Healthcare Workers East, the Greater New York Healthcare Association and the Healthcare Association of New York State – are demanding results for the millions of dollars they’ve staked on him and his Republican majority.
Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith (D-Queens) is playing the tight budget situation particularly well; his Democrats voted unanimously against the Bruno budget, and it seems like most or all of his members will stand together as the budget brouhaha continues. (Democratic Senator Carl Kruger of Brooklyn said publicly this week that he might vote with Bruno, who recently named him chair of the Senate Social Services Committee.) If Smith keeps his Senators together, attempts to override Spitzer vetoes just won’t happen, and Democrats will cement substantive control over state budgeting.
That’s not something Bruno wants to see happen – and it’s probably the reason he’s swearin’ and fightin’ like the Golden Gloves champ he was as a young man.
Keep an eye on the Update for round-by-round details in the next few weeks.