State Aid Instead Of Tax Cuts
Gov. David Paterson said he supports measures in the federal stimulus package to help states, but he questioned the need for additional tax cuts.
The $819 billion package approved by the House yesterday includes about $275 billion in tax cuts, which is expected to put about $20 a month more into middle-class workers’ paychecks.
Paterson said the tax cuts won’t stimulate the economy.
“If you give people a tax cut, they are holding the money. If you give people rebates, they are saving the money,” Paterson said on WVTL 1570-AM in Amsterdam this morning. “This could drive us into a 10-year recession; this is what happened to Japan. We’ve got to get people to work, we have to get people spending money again.”
He added, “I think a tax cut is fine, but I don’t think it’s the right formula we’re using right now. So I don’t really agree with the president on that.”
Later on Utica radio station WIBX 950-AM, Paterson said more money should go to states, who could use the money to offset tax and fee increases. Paterson is proposing 137 new taxes and fees in his 2009-10 budget.
“The tax cut I think is so small it won’t make a difference,” he said. “And the state is now raising fees in our deficit reduction plan. Then the citizen doesn’t know the difference.”
But he did praise the aid to states in the package, as well as the roughly $30 billion in it for instrastructure projects. Paterson said about 40 projects in the state are “shovel ready projects that could start tomorrow.”
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Hey, Gov
1. The vast, vast majority of people here DON’T save. That’s a big part of our problem.
2. If your figures are correct, and the average middle class worker will get $20 a month out
out of this, the State will easily take that twenty and fifty more out of their pockets in new taxes and fees
thanks to your venerable self and your cohorts.
3. Instead of advocating individual spending, you are advocating that all the money allocated, and
more goes to government so people like yourself and Park Slope Chuckie can spend it
on a plethora of non-productive state jobs.