O’Mara: New budget is a ‘spending spree’

Albany, N.Y., April 8 —State Senator Tom O’Mara (R,C,I-Big Flats), Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee, said that the upcoming 2022-2023 state budget will hike government spending by at least $8 billion over last year but fail to provide enough permanent, broad-based tax relief, mandate relief, or regulatory reform.

O’Mara called the state’s new, highest-ever, $220-billion fiscal plan a “one-party vision for spending billions of taxpayer dollars.”

O’Mara said, “This Albany Democrat giveaway goes far beyond any reasonable sense of fairness, responsibility or long-term sustainability for hard-working, taxpaying citizens. It’s the largest spending plan ever enacted but it fails to include the scope of tax, regulatory and mandate relief needed to truly begin turning this state around.  It largely ignores the need to rebuild and revitalize the manufacturing sector. It’s a one-party vision for spending billions of dollars that’s teeing up a next generation of hard-hit taxpayers and unaffordable living in New York State.  We are going to be footing the bill and carrying the burden for these all-Democrat budgets for years to come.”

The state Senate and Assembly are working throughout the day today to approve a final budget that will be signed into law by Governor Kathy Hochul.  O’Mara said that the final budget will take important steps to address key priorities and include some badly needed tax relief for farmers and small businesses, but it risks a future of fiscal and economic pitfalls.

“In the end, this budget can only be defined as a spending spree,” O’Mara said.  “Governor Hochul follows in the footsteps of former Governor Cuomo and the Legislature’s Democrat supermajorities who last year began setting New York government loose on an irresponsible, extremely liberal, far-left frenzy of spending that blows through a one-time federal windfall and risks a future of higher and higher state taxing and borrowing.  It will spread around a lot of taxpayer dollars and make plenty of people happy in the short term.  But the bottom line is that it will not change New York’s reputation as one of America’s highest-taxed, highest-spending, highest-regulated states.”

Throughout this year’s budget adoption cycle, O’Mara and members of the Senate Republican Conference have highlighted key priorities through a comprehensive “Take Back NY” agenda.  The GOP agenda has focused on lower taxes, less regulation, greater accountability, economic growth, job creation, and more common sense on state fiscal practices.

O’Mara concluded, “New York remains one of the highest-taxed states in America.  We are one of the most overregulated states in the nation.  Our local governments and local property taxpayers continue to foot the bill for one of the country’s heaviest burdens of unfunded state mandates.  It’s no coincidence that New York led the nation last year in overall tax burden and population loss.  Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers are heading for the exits.  This state is at a crossroads and we needed to enact an across-the-board agenda to permanently cut taxes, dramatically address affordability, and significantly rebuild stronger and safer communities.”