It was the kind of big-spending Albany mentality that drives Gov. David A. Paterson crazy these days.

In 2004, after the governor proposed some $600 million in cuts to the state budget, the Senate minority leader said he had a better idea. The $429 million in education cuts the governor wanted? Put it all back in. And while you’re at it, throw in $35 million for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and $250 million for affordable housing.

Back then, though, Mr. Paterson was that minority leader. And when the governor, George E. Pataki, later vetoed $235 million from the Legislature’s budget, Mr. Paterson called it “an unconscionable maneuver.”

To recall Mr. Paterson so loudly crusading against a leaner state budget seems incongruous with the kind of fiscal conservatism he now says the state needs.

A liberal Democrat, who as a state legislator voted for increasing income and sales taxes and for generously financing expensive social programs, Mr. Paterson’s talk these days is all about keeping taxes where they are and shrinking the budget.

He has compared the state to a shopper addicted to a credit card. He uses phrases that have the subtle ring of a conservative’s economic philosophy, as in the need “to do more with less.” He has even invoked Ayn Rand, the libertarian novelist whose writings are considered gospel among many small-government, low-tax intellectual conservatives.

“He really seems to be going out of his way to strut his stuff as a fiscal conservative,” said Blair Horner, legislative director of the New York Public Interest Research Group, a nonpartisan watchdog group. “I think he is clearly sending the message that when it comes to fiscal matters, he’s Nixon going to China, he’s the Democrat who can fundamentally change the state’s dysfunctional budget process.”

Some longtime Albany politicians say Mr. Paterson is virtually unrecognizable from the state senator they knew for two decades. And they said they thought political opportunism might be what was really driving the governor’s newly stiffened fiscal resolve

“He was a tax-and-spend liberal,” said Shaun Marie Levine, executive director of the Conservative Party of New York State, who added that she was suspicious of politicians who say they support tighter budgets these days. “If Wall Street weren’t in the mess it’s in, Governor Paterson would be willing to keep every program and not cut spending at all. They all would.”

Mr. Paterson does not dispute that he saw financial matters differently as a legislator. In a recent interview, he said he felt that some of the borrowing and spending that he supported as a senator had contributed to the current $47 billion deficit the state is projected to have over the next three and a half years.

“I, in retrospect, wish I had been more conscious of the continuous spending,” Mr. Paterson said, adding that with all the long-term debt the state was piling on then, “We had gone from tax and spend to borrow and spend.” He added: “It had become ridiculous.”

In 2003, as the state was facing a gaping budget deficit of $11.5 billion and a souring economy, Mr. Paterson voted for the law that raised income taxes on the state’s highest earners. He also supported a measure that year that raised the state sales tax. He has said he now opposes any tax increases to help the state solve its current financial problems and has even floated the idea of lowering some business taxes.

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