New York State Division of the Budget released the FY 2025 Enacted Budget Financial Plan (in a Friday news dump), which affirms the need for a new approach to budgeting in New York. In response, Invest in Our New York released the following statement:
Governor Hochul’s Division of Budget’s FY 2025 Financial Plan again highlights her short-sighted vision to address an unstable, unsustainable financial outlook that will only perpetuate the State’s growing affordability crisis. We need a new approach to investing in the needs of our low-income, working, and middle-class communities: an approach that stops using peoples’ well-being as political leverage during negotiations and instead prioritizes the dignity of the many over protecting the major wealth of a select few.
The “spending growth” that is “expected to exceed available resources” should be addressed during the next budget cycle –– not in “future years.” We already know that New York will lose almost $6 billion in annual public funds in two years due to the expiring 2021 modest tax increases on the super-wealthy and corporations. Lawmakers can make a fiscally responsible, politically convenient, and morally imperative choice before that happens. Instead of waiting until the last minute and continuing the trend of year-to-year “find cash between the couch cushions” approach to passing a budget, elected officials can simply make the ultra-wealthy pay what they owe in taxes permanently.
This shouldn’t be a difficult choice for Governor Hochul to make. Earlier this month, Comptroller DiNapoli reported that nearly one in five New York children live in poverty. Unfortunately, the Comptroller’s ‘Enacted FY2025 Budget report’ failed to mention that largely working-class New Yorkers are leaving the state –– not millionaires, whose population has grown by 48% in New York City alone over the past decade. It’s no wonder the people who keep our state running are also the majority of those leaving – they can no longer afford to raise a family in New York.
The overwhelming majority of New Yorkers support implementing a more equitable tax system to ensure robust, long-term, stable funding for our children, families, and communities. By failing to take meaningful action, New York is leaving crucial funding on the table and essential services and opportunities for our communities hanging in the balance.
Enacting more equitable taxes on the ultra-wealthy is a popular, fiscally responsible decision. It would provide a more stable financial outlook for New York and ensure that our state can adequately fund education, healthcare, housing assistance, and initiatives to combat child poverty and economic inequality. It’s time to tax the rich so we can invest in our New York.
Commentaires