The following is the text of a letter to the editor published March 11 in the Schenectady Daily Gazette: New York State's failure to adjust its personal income tax structure for inflation has, indeed, increased the tax burden on m Read More
Tag: Taxes and Spending
Your Feb. 28 editorial on the impact of California's celebrity-backed tax hikes ("Meathead Economics") certainly struck a chord with anyone monitoring the trends here in the Empire State. Read More
With its emphasis on reducing dependency and putting people to work, the historic federal welfare reform of 1996 produced spectacular results in New York and across the country. In the past decade, welfare caseloads across the Empire State have dropped 60 percent, and the child poverty rate in the state has decreased 20 percent. Read More
A healthy debate is now raging in Washington, D.C., over the use of congressional "earmarks" to spend pork barrel money out of federal budget appropriations. Conservatives and liberals alike agree that the practice is wasteful and should be eliminated or severely curtailed. Read More
Based on recent history, Albany's legislative leaders had reason to assume Gov. Pataki wouldn't put up much of a fight when they added billions of dollars to his already generous budget plan for the 2006-07 fiscal year. Read More
State legislators will return to the Capitol this week to confront the more than 200 budget vetoes handed down by Gov. George Pataki before their Passover-Easter recess. Read More
New York's new $112.5 billion budget includes the largest state spending increase in more than three decades -- even without including the legislative additions blocked by Gov. George Pataki, according to a FiscalWatch memo released today by the Empi Read More
New York state's 2006-07 budget features a record $1.3 billion increase in support for K-12 public education. State school aid is up 8 percent from the previous year, boosting the total to an all-time high of $17.6 billion. Read More