Skelos To Dems: Repeal Taxes In 2008-09 Budget
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- February
- 26
With the state set to receive an infusion of $24.6 billion in federal stimulus aid, Senate Minority Leader Dean Skelos, R-Nassau County, said today that Gov. David Paterson and Democrats in the majority should repeal the $250 million in fees and taxes on health-insurance costs approved by lawmakers last month.
They should also return the $306 million that was swept from the state Power Authority to close the $1.6 billion budget gap in the 2008-09 fiscal year, which ends March 31, he said. He said the money should be used to lower energy costs for upstate businesses.
And they should also eliminate the $620 a year tuition increase at SUNY; the money is being used almost entirely to help close the state’s $14 billion budget gap in the 2009-10 fiscal year, Skelos said.
Skelos reiterated his concerns that the stimulus money will not be fairly distributed around the state, saying talk of building high-speed rail in upstate New York is a good idea but shouldn’t be a substitute for aid that would help the upstate economy now.
“The reality is that high-speed will not happen for another 10, 15, 20 years. It involves billions and billions of dollars,” he said. “So I don’t want the governor to say to the western part of the state or upstate New York, your piece of the action is going to be a high-speed rail, 15, 20 years from now. They need immediate stimulus money in order to start creating jobs in that part of the state.”
Earlier in the day, Paterson knocked lawmakers on WNYC radio for fighting over where the aid will go, citing the state’s dire fiscal condition.
“We’re in an emergency, we’re in a crisis,” he said. “One of the things that is disturbing me about a lot of people right now is they acknowledge that we are in a crisis in the academic sense, but then when you try to respond to the crisis, you start hearing regional and political interests.”
This entry was posted
on Thursday, February 26th, 2009 at 5:34 pm by Joseph Spector.
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Some real good edgy posts about corruption
Westchester politics at YonkersRising.com—rising times blog.
check it out JN needs to do more of the same
Yes repeal taxes – that’s the best way to fix the $14 billion budget gap.
Skelos just makes himself look stupid.
Great idea by the Dem leadership to add even more taxes to health insurance that will be immediately passed on to the distressed citizenry. Their answer to everything is inevitably to tax, tax, tax. How real dollars are actually produced and how to make one dollar into two dollars by industry rather than chicanery, is of little interest to them.