An eventual $2 billion budget surplus that Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his aides keep touting will be mostly spent, and is based on unspecified cuts, prompting leading critics to charge the administration is being disingenuous.

During his budget address last week, Cuomo presented a chart showing how a self-imposed two-percent cap on state government spending growth would change the $10 billion deficit that he bridged in the 2011 budget into a $2 billion surplus by 2016.

But E.J. McMahon, president of the right-leaning Empire Center, points out that the number is dependent upon “the magic footnote”: It assumes $7.7 billion in future cuts that are not lined out in the state’s latest financial plan.

“The first time I heard it, I thought, huh?” E.J. McMahon, president of the Empire Center, said Sunday at a meeting of the Conservative Party. “Has he created a $2 billion surplus? In a word, no. … This is an aspiration.”

 The law as proposed does not factor this in, though, and projects a $1.6 billion deficit for 2016. Even assuming that these cuts are enacted in future years during future negotiations with a future Legislature, Cuomo has proposed to spend the savings on tax cuts. As the Citizens Budget Commission’s Betsy Lynam notes, this changes the out-year budget surpluses to between $150 million and $200 million. (You can see this on page 23 of the financial plan.)

“Continued spending restraint is a laudable goal – it helped Governor Cuomo turn budget gaps in double digit billions into three years of balanced budgets and manageable gaps in future years,” Lynam wrote with Jamison Dague. “However, hard choices lie ahead if they are to become a reality.”

The Cuomo administration says its two-percent assumption is not notional, but real. The current budget meets this cap, as does the proposal. And the financial plan is clear, aides say.

“The math is indisputable: Governor Cuomo inherited a $10 billion deficit which he turned into a $2 billion surplus through fiscal discipline and a strict spending cap,” said Morris Peters, a spokesman for the Division of the Budget. “Every year, groups try to manipulate facts to fit their own agendas but it’s ridiculous to suggest that the State will suddenly ignore a cap that it has been living under for every year of this administration.”