O’Mara: Hochul's massive budget plan keeps fueling ‘Spend, Spend, Spend’ addiction

Albany, N.Y., January 21-—State Senator Tom O’Mara (R,C-Big Flats), Ranking Member on the Senate Finance Committee, today said that Governor Kathy Hochul’s proposed 2025-2026 state budget calls for a record-breaking, $252-billion fiscal plan that increases spending by nearly $20 billion over the budget she proposed last year and “downplays the fiscal realities facing this state, ignores the long-term burdens being shouldered by middle-class taxpayers, and refuses to take the steps needed to seriously address affordability.”

O’Mara stressed that over the past six years, since the beginning of all-Democrat, one-party control of state government in 2019, state spending has increased nearly $70 billion, a 40% growth in spending far outpacing inflation during that time.

O’Mara said, “Governor Hochul and Albany Democrats are addicted to spending. They can’t stop. It’s out of control and it’s shocking. Despite all the warning signs, Governor Hochul keeps feeding a ‘spend, spend, spend’ addiction that will never make New York more affordable. It will keep driving hard-working taxpayers and middle-class families out of the state. It will keep killing jobs and strangling local economies. It keeps ignoring the reality that New York remains one of America’s highest-taxed, least affordable, most debt-ridden and overregulated states, and that we’re leading the nation in population loss. The Albany Democrat spending addiction over the past six years has put in place massive, long-term spending commitments -- and with massive commitments looming in their pursuit of a radical climate agenda – that will never be affordable or sustainable for state and local taxpayers, small businesses and manufacturers, and continually hard-pressed upstate communities, economies, and workers.”

Like he did following Hochul’s State of the State message last week, O’Mara warned that the Democrat-led state Legislature, which he has called the “biggest spending Legislature in state history,” like they have for the past several years while increasing state spending by nearly $70 billion, are once again eyeing even more long-term, higher spending commitments. 

O’Mara was recently reappointed as the Ranking Republican member on the Senate Finance Committee which oversees the Legislature’s annual budget adoption process. 

Joint Senate-Assembly budget hearings are scheduled to begin next week. 

At the start of the new legislative session in early January, O’Mara and other members of the Senate GOP unveiled a “Liberate New York” legislative agenda to counteract Democrat proposals and offer a range of policies focusing on public safety and security, economic growth and job creation, tax relief and regulatory reform, and affordability initiatives.