New York Gubernatorial Candidate Proposes $5B in Medicaid Reductions To Pay for Tax Cuts

New York gubernatorial candidate William Weld (R) on Tuesday said he favored reducing Medicaid spending in order to eliminate the state income tax for people with annual incomes less than $75,000, the AP/New York Post reports. Weld, a former governor of Massachusetts, said the state could save $5 billion annually to pay for the tax cuts if the cost of state's Medicaid program was reduced to twice the average cost of Medicaid programs nationwide. New York currently spends more than $40 billion on Medicaid annually, more than any other state (AP/New York Post, 3/29). Weld said, "As one who thinks there's no such thing as government money, there's only taxpayers' money, I don't generally start out when analyzing a tax cut saying, 'How am I possibly going to pay for this?'" Weld added, "That's looking at it from the point of view of the government, as though the government ineluctably owns that money." John Faso (R), a former state Assembly member and fellow gubernatorial candidate, said Weld's "numbers don't add up" because Medicaid is funded by state, federal and local governments. Faso said a $5.3 billion reduction in Medicaid would save the state only $2.65 billion. Andrea Tantaros, a Weld spokesperson, later said that the tax cuts would be paid for in several ways, including cutting Medicaid waste and fraud, limiting state spending to the previous year's revenues, and enrolling state workers in less expensive pension plans (Cooper, New York Times, 3/29). In related news, the state Attorney General's Office on Tuesday announced that its Medicaid Fraud Unit recovered $274 million in 2005, up from $63 million in 2004. However, Matthew Maquire of the Business Council of New York State said, "This is a significant improvement, but it's still a drop in the bucket" (AP/New York Post [2], 3/29).