The PAC-Perspective by Ted Flint
A close look at the 2026 Executive Budget, and one can see why New York State continues to hemorrhage residents at an alarming rate. Governor Kathy Hochul’s $252 billion dollar boondoggle has something for everyone, the big question is how do we pay for it all. The state is more than $15.5 billion in the red. You wouldn’t know it if you heard Governor Kathy Hochul’s recent State of the State message. In an attempt to curry favor with her left flank, Hochul is calling for free breakfast and lunch for all school children, even for families who can afford it, expanding the child tax credit for families with children under age 4 and free childcare. “Your family is my fight,” crowed the state’s first “mom governor.”
Thanks Mom, for feeding our kids. There was a time when a father would go to work each day and make enough money to feed his family. Mom would stay home and raise the children. But those days are long gone. Government, especially here in New York, takes so much of our money, it’s next to impossible for most families to make it on one salary. Mommy Dearest can talk all she wants about making the state more affordable, but her “remedies” will just make the problem worse.
She’s calling for a $1 billion hike to an already overly-generous Medicaid program, a $1.7 billion bump in school aid funding, free community college, free college tuition for students ages 25-55(with certain conditions), billions for first-time home buyers and a billion dollars for “climate initiatives.”
Then she rolled out her “inflation refund” proposal, which would return $500 to families and $300 to individuals. How about not taking so much of our income in the first place? So, some 8.6 million New Yorkers can expect some of their own money back this fall. The Governor maintains these measures will address the affordability crisis. But insiders say this budget is a sign that Hochul is expecting a tough re-election bid in 2026.
Then, there are items on her wish list that the media tends to overlook. Such as $1,200 bonus cash for welfare recipients when they have a baby: boosting monthly public assistance benefits by $100 for expectant mothers throughout their pregnancies. That will cost us $8.5 million. New Yorkers are also being asked to pay for the delivery of 10 million diapers to low-income families. If that’s not enough (and for New York democrats, it never is) the governor has set aside $25 million for a Reproductive Freedom and Equity Grant program, which the New York State Catholic Conference is calling an “abortion slush fund.”
Hochul claims these measures will “improve maternal and infant health for the state’s most vulnerable households.” What about the households that have to pay for this profligacy? The inflationary environment has created additional revenue for the state, which has seen its coffers grow by $5.3 billion in sales tax revenue.
To cover this generosity, the Governor’s people will employ gimmicks such using unanticipated revenue and by extending the “ultra-millionaires’ tax, further punishing the state’s high earners and wealth creators. The one silver lining is a “middle-class tax cut for couples and families making under $323,000 annually.
What the governor is proposing is additional transfer payments; redistribution of wealth is what Karl Marx called it. New York State trails only California when it comes to outmigration. Since 2020, over 880,000 New Yorkers have fled to greener pastures. This budget and the subsequent billions of dollars in sweeteners legislative democrats will tack on, will only make that number grow.
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