Quoted Text

CAPITOL
Paterson calls health care unions’ ads ‘reprehensible’
BY MICHAEL GORMLEY The Associated Press

    A sad school girl in a dark classroom all alone. A frantic mother racing her unconscious child to a hospital that had closed. These and other images are still being broadcast as special interests spend millions on ads blasting the spending cuts Gov. David Paterson is pursuing despite New York’s $24.6 billion share of the new federal stimulus package.
    “Their conduct has been, I think, reprehensible,” Paterson told The Associated Press Monday, referring to the health care lobby ads.
    The stimulus money headed to New York for use over the next two years has turned a historic fiscal crisis into a manageable, almost routine shortfall. So why are the million-dollar TV commercials from unions still warning of a threat to the American dream in New York? And why is Paterson still calling for painful cuts?
    “The ads say this is the worst cut ever. Yes! Exactly! This is three times the worst budget ever,” Paterson said Monday, after seeing the ads over the weekend.
    “They can keep running their ads, do whatever they think they can do to my polls, and roll out as many blind people in wheelchairs as they like,” Paterson said, referring to one recent ad attacking his cuts. “I’m still going to reduce this deficit.”
    Paterson said the cuts he’s proposed for hospitals, schools and just about every other state-funded program are still needed in the 2009-10 budget due April 1 to end decades of overspending. Failure to do so, he said, will inevitably create another fiscal crisis in just three years, when there will be no federal bailout. And while the bailout could cover most of the projected $30 billion in deficits forecast for the next two fiscal years, Paterson notes that if spending isn’t reduced, the state will face deficits totaling $38 billion between the 2011-12 and 2012-13 fi scal years. That would force much deeper cuts and higher taxes.
    Just click from this story or turn this page for an illustration of what Paterson sees as New York’s future if spending isn’t checked: California faces insolvency without midyear fixes that include $14.4 billion in higher taxes, cuts, and the possible layoffs of 10,000 state workers.
    Back in New York, however, the public worker unions note that the federal stimulus bill is intended to prevent public worker layoffs that would worsen the recession and reduce services. Worse, they say the cuts to education will threaten the future of New York.
    “It’s the story of a place where the American dream is in danger,” states one of the TV ads by the New York State United Teachers union. The warning includes images of sad faces on children, concerned nurses, scared seniors, and an angry laborer in a hard hat.
    The two sides don’t even agree on terms. The stimulus aid is targeted to eliminate cuts in education, from elementary schools to colleges. But what is the cut? Paterson said it’s the nearly $698 million cut he proposed in December, or about 3.3 percent less than the current $21 billion in school aid. He notes that would still leave school aid at 42 percent above the 2003-04 level. But the teachers’ union and other advocates say Paterson’s December proposal amounts to a cut of $2.5 billion, based on what was projected to be an increase in school aid under a 2007 law requiring a four-year plan.
    William Van Slyke, a spokesman for the Healthcare Association of New York State, which represents hospitals, said at least a half-dozen upstate hospitals have...........http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar01201

I have to agree with Mr. Paterson here......it's like holding it up to the public and saying there is a scapegoat and it's not my fault.....sorry,,,,not
believin' today......healthcare/medicine/etc are NOT God.......the world will not end....life will just change.....anyone else ready for the challenge......
they still refuse to use the 'D' word.........how about camping....I'll bring the marshmallow sticks......