Gov. Paterson says "Naughty, Naughty Lawmakers. You got us into a serious debt."
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[quote=NY Times]ALBANY — In an unusually blunt address to the New York State Legislature on Wednesday, Gov. David A. Paterson chastised the lawmakers before him, saying they had spent the state into near fiscal ruin and stood by as a plague of political corruption destroyed New Yorkers’ trust in government.
Dispensing with the ritualized flattery that typically precedes the annual State of the State address, Mr. Paterson warned, in sometimes biblical tones, that lawmakers faced a political and financial reckoning if they did not act quickly to repair New York’s finances and restore citizens’ faith in public officials.
“You have left me and other governors no choice,” Mr. Paterson said. “Whether it be by vetoes or delayed spending, I will not write bad checks, and we will not mortgage our children’s future.”
The speech was a sharp departure from Mr. Paterson’s State of the State address last year, when he interspersed calls for budget cuts with warm asides and encomiums to individual lawmakers, drawing occasional laughter from the audience. His public scolding on Wednesday drew a cool response from lawmakers of both parties, who gave Mr. Paterson little applause, and rose from their chairs only when Mr. Paterson entered and exited the chamber.
The normally jovial Mr. Paterson did not crack a single smile during the roughly 30-minute address. He issued calls for tougher ethics oversight, the abolition of wasteful state programs and even a hard cap on state spending, a proposal he made last year to little avail.
Lawmakers, he charged, had too often bowed to the wishes of powerful special interests, feeding an “addiction to spending, power and approval” and plunging the state into economic catastrophe.
“No longer are we going to run New York like a payday loan operation,” the governor vowed. “We have got to find a procedure that cures the spending structure that has infected our budget process for the last 20 years.”
But after warning lawmakers for months of the state’s impending fiscal ruin, Mr. Paterson seemed determined to offer hope as well as caution, suggesting that state officials now had an opportunity to restore New York to glory.
“There is still time to rebuild the Empire State,” Mr. Paterson told lawmakers.
“Work with me, follow me, so that New York can turn the corner.”
With statewide elections only months away, and his own future as uncertain as New York’s finances, Mr. Paterson’s speech carried an inevitable subtext — not least because the governor delivered his remarks with Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, his likely challenger in next fall’s Democratic primary, standing a few feet away on the dais.
“Some say that we will not succeed, that the story has already been written and the ending is ordained,” Mr. Paterson told his colleagues, a thought that might just as easily be applied to the widespread belief among fellow Democrats that he cannot win election as to pessimism about the state’s finances. “But storylines change, and people change.”
Mr. Paterson’s remarks drew quick praise from business groups and budget hawks, but less from leaders of the Legislature.
“New Yorkers are angry, and so am I,” said Senator John Sampson, the Democratic leader in the Senate. “The people want statesmen to fix our problems, not politicians who ascribe blame without offering a solution.”[/quote]
Source: [url]http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/nyregion/07state.html[/url]
I somehow believe this is hypocritical/ironic in some way, shape, or form...
Gov. Paterson fighting his own power. :cop:
Wow. Politicians cutting straight to the point?
Unheard of.
Moar political bonkers.
When will they learn no-one gives a shit.
Well, at least SOMEONE'S got the balls to stand up. Gov. Richardson fucked over alot of shit for New Mexicans because he decided to skim off the top here and there so he could buy a new jet. :downs:
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