NY: Cutting State Government Funding Completely

[spotlight-shure]

Well I wanted to start this thread because I reside in Upstate New York, and they are talking about completely cutting funding for all State Government jobs and services. My mother is disabled, and relies on her disability checks, so without them, I have no idea where we'll be. I'm 18 and in the process of becoming a certified Pharmacy Technician, but I'm worried about what will happen with the results of cutting State Funding tonight. They're making a decision at midnight, but if they do cut the funding, all State workers will be laid off, courts will close, cops will lose their jobs, and there will be no more welfare, social security, disability, or food stamps for New York. Millions will be without homes, food, and health care, my family included. I was just wondering what other people think of this.

[Safyre420]

From what little I've just read on this, It does seem like New York may end up shutting down completely. I don't see how this could even be considered, even if it were just simple budget cuts, which doesn't seem like what's going on, but I'm not from New York so I really don't have the full details.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2010/06/14/2010-06-14_budget_deadline.html

[SuicidiaParasidia]

i seriously doubt they would risk it. not with all the chaos that would cause; and THEY would have to deal with that possible outcome.

[Vanito]

I doubt they will do it.. but on the other hand it IS the USA. If they do it go to a large disability group, ask for advice.

[fragglerocks]

I'm with everyone here. If they do that, there will be a backlash the likes of which we have never seen. But it does seem to fit in with the governments new plan to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, so I wouldn't be shocked if it happens. But being a single mother who relies on Medicaid for my daughter's health, it makes me angry. If this happens OP, you let me know when and where the protest is happening, and I will gladly be there to march. Utterly ridiculous. They are cutting lifelines! And you know who will suffer the worst? The children. Some lawmakers really ought to be ashamed of themselves. :wtf:

[Black_Barook!]

Isn't a government supposed to provide services, jobs, security and a social net for it's citizens? Doesn't cutting off all funding disqualify them from their position as government.

[Mistermook]

A government's a business too. If they can't pay the bills they can't pay the bills. State governments (thankfully) don't get a license to print money, else you end up with the sorts of issues the EU is facing for the same reasons.

[Black_Barook!]

So what got the New York government in such a state that they had to cut off all funding.

[Mistermook]

I'm not a resident so I don't know for sure, but the general recession is impacting all government finances in several ways. When individual incomes drop tax revenue follows, and a state like New York is probably heavily invested in other things detrimentally affected by a recession like tourism and transportation fees. Government spending doesn't have the opportunity to run in the black too much like a private business does either - if you're showing a profit in government you're perceived as either overtaxing or failing to provide services to the best of your ability. So government spending is usually within sharp margins or on credit, but that means when income takes a sharp downturn suddenly a government is faced with the fact of raising taxes, cutting spending or else withdrawing even more credit to try to spark job growth (because government spending is even better than private spending at spurring job growth thanks to the way it's counted as its changing hands.)

Cutting spending usually means a political fight for services, or worse it's contractually prohibited with state employees or something. Borrowing has partisan connotations in the US, it could be political suicide in some places. I don't know about New York. Raising taxes is never a good way to get elected and you've got to be careful when raising taxes during a recession not to make the recession even worse. Shutting down everything could very well be the best of all possible bad options, or it could be a political ploy to push troublesome negotiations for reducing services or raising taxes.

I think a lot of things happen in business and government where people want there to be some critical "ah ha" moment of bad decision making. Sometimes there is that event or policy, but most of the time I think the people in any organization are trying to do their jobs to the best of their abilities within the confines of their knowledge and the law. Sometimes even the best decisions for last month turn out to be extraordinarily bad decisions for the current month though.

[spotlight-shure]

Isn't a government supposed to provide services, jobs, security and a social net for it's citizens? Doesn't cutting off all funding disqualify them from their position as government.
That's a very good point. I didn't think of it that way.

Well their decision was that they will keep everything open and running for one more week. Until then, i have no idea what's going to happen. I really don't know what to do. I don't think the citizens of New York know how big of a deal this really is. I haven't heard many people talking about it at all, or complaining. It seems like we're all a little out of the loop.