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Jobs
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"Today New Yorkers have a choice," said New York State Governor George Pataki at a gathering of Long Island business people today. "We can adopt a fiscal plan that simply gets us through the moment, or we can work together to make this a defining moment." He said that increasing taxes will only help the state in the short term. In the long run, he said, creating jobs is the answer to the state's fiscal woes. And, although he did promise to keep his current business-friendly programs fully funded, he never did say how he will specifically overcome the estimated $20 billion deficit New York State faces in the next year.
According to Pataki, despite the stressed economy New York still gained 120,000 more jobs than it had in 1995, and its welfare rolls have 1 million fewer recipients. Raising taxes just keeps investors away, said Pataki, and then New York doesn't get the jobs, and less tax money moves to government coffers. In fact, he said, the last time New York chose taxes instead of jobs, New Yorkers suffered. According to Pataki, in 1989, government chose massive tax increases and chose to delay already scheduled tax cuts. New York fell further into recession and Long Island's transformation from a defense economy to a high tech economy was unnecessarily delayed. The result? The national recession in 1990s lasted 8 months, New York State's lasted 39 months and cost 500,000 jobs. Long Island's recession lasted 46 months and cost Long Island 90,000 jobs. "It turned a short national recession into a Long Island depression," he said. He said the executive budget he will propose next week will include new tax incentives to attract high tech jobs. Incentives like a high tech investment tax credit to leverage up to $250 million of venture capital investments. Those dollars will target small businesses linked to high tech businesses he said. The corporate tax cut to small businesses, including high tech, will be funded in full and is on schedule, and this is expected to reduce the rate small businesses pay, saving entrepreneurs millions that could be reinvested in jobs. He also promised to change the way Medicaid reimbursements made to counties, although he offered no details. The budget, he said, will include a new Medicaid cost containment package that could generate tens of millions of dollars in savings if the legislature passes it. He will also give the counties fiscal relief by allowing them to keep tens of millions they would otherwise owe the state. "We will work together to weather the fiscal crisis both at the state level and at the county and local level without resorting to the massive tax increases that we know destroy jobs and opportunity."
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