Some thoughts from the President of the NY State College Democrats on Governor Paterson's budget proposal and his latest blog today on Kos
cross posted on the College Dems of NY blog: http://www.collegedemsny.com/...
Over the course of the past couple of weeks, Governor Paterson has posted several times on New York’s liberal blog website, The Albany Project and on the biggest liberal blog, Daily Kos. In his latest post that came out today, the Governor describes the monumental task at hand of balancing a NYS budget with a huge deficit. His blog post can be read here: http://www.dailykos.com/...
I personally campaigned hard in upstate NY to get Spitzer elected and I remember shaking hands with Paterson at a debate watch party in Cornell during the election season. I even got the chance to meet Governor Paterson a second time in Denver at the NY delegation brunch during the week of the DNC Convention. I have yet to make a decisive opinion about the actions of the Governor but I do not envy the task ahead of him, and if anything is evident, its that he is trying to find a way to close the deficit in any way possible. Having said that, I cannot sit here quietly, as the President of the NYS College Democrats, without voicing some displeasure at the Governor’s budget proposal.
As a student government representative at Binghamton University, I was unhappy about the budget proposal’s cuts to the SUNY educational system. I understand and am willing to pay for an increase in SUNY tuition which is expected to be $320 for my spring semester, and over $600 for the given year. What I have become most upset about, it that the funding of the SUNY system is being cut AND on top of that, the budget proposal is mandating a tax on SUNY tuition, which is coming from that $320 increase. The cut in tuition marks a long standing tradition of the NYS government cutting SUNY tuition. If you look at the state spending, you will see a noticeable drop in SUNY funding over the last 5 years. Show me a politician who can put his mouth where the money is in raising funding for SUNY tuition and that politician will have my vote.
We all know how much the American educational system is lagging behind the world leaders and cutting funding to affordable and intellectually sound institutions in not the way to restore America’s educational glory. I was proud to report that my school, Binghamton University was rated as the #1 value college in the nation. That reputation has led to almost double the amount of applications this year that Binghamton normally receives, in large part because of the struggling economy. For me, I got into schools that charge $45,000 a year for a private college like George Washington or Boston University but knowing that the average student comes out with thousands of dollars in debt from college, and knowing that I wanted to go to graduate school, I knew that I would end up in the SUNY system. Thousands of other students are in that same situation.
Perhaps what angers me the most, is that NY sports teams are getting millions to pay for new stadiums. I’m a big Yankees fan, but why are the yankees getting $663 million from NY taxpayers for a new stadium so Steinbrenner can get richer? http://www.reuters.com/...
Why is Citi Bank being bailed out by taxpayers but yet the Mets ownership gets that money from CitiBank from naming rights to their new stadium? It just seems like the rich are getting richer and the middle class is getting stuck to foot the bill. The idea of a millionaires tax has been brought up by many people and economists say that such a tax would backfire, but I have yet to hear a compelling or logical reason why it would fail. Rich people are not going to move out of New York City, the capital of the global marketplace.
I thank the Governor for posts in the blogging community, and I look forward to continuing this discussion with him and my colleagues at our April 2009 NY College Democrats Convention at St. Johns in Manhattan. All he needs to do is accept our invitation to speak at the convention.
Dan Levin is the President of the NYS College Democrats