Over the last few months, we’ve seen how hard it is through efforts by the DOGE team and some Republicans in Congress to cut anything — anything at all — in government budgets.
It’s because both sides of the aisle continue to cater to special interests who benefit from the big spending.
By saying yes to all the new spending, they make friends with all of these groups and individuals getting government gifts.
Scale it back and you’ll lose them. Keep spending to make them happy and just tack it onto the debt without raising taxes and no one seems to notice.
Cutting is so hard that, even when the stars and moons align to actually implement spending reforms, soon thereafter, when no one‘s looking, there’ll be an effort to reverse the reforms.
That’s exactly what’s happening with Andrew Cuomo‘s promise to the city’s municipal unions that, if elected mayor, he will seek to reverse the Tier 6 pension reforms that he boasted about when he first took office 15 years ago.
Tier 6 was a modest attempt to get a handle on the ever-increasing pension payouts to municipal workers. Those who went into public service in New York State before 2012 were known as tiers one through five. The lower tier contributes little, if anything, to their pension and healthcare costs. And they are free to jack up the overtime in their last couple of years of service to artificially inflate their pensions, sometimes by up to 50%.
For example, a law-enforcement officer with a $200,000 base salary could work $100,000 in overtime in his last year and have that tacked onto his base salary to set his pension based off a $300,000, rather than a $200,000, salary. That’s why it’s no longer uncommon for some public employees to retire with pensions exceeding $150,000 a year.
Tier 6 was meant to change this, at least for employees hired after 2012. They would have to contribute more into their own pensions and would have a limit as to how much overtime could be factored into the pension.
But, lo and behold, the unions have been chipping away at this reform. Last year, the state legislature undid a number of these taxpayer safeguards in the dead of night while no one was looking. And, now, Andrew Cuomo is promising to do the same to the city’s unions.
Of course, this is important because they’re mad at him for helping to usher in the reforms a decade and a half ago. But now he’s got to get elected as mayor and he will do just about anything it takes (and be as wildly inconsistent as possible) if it means getting an extra vote or two.
It’s shameless and he shouldn’t get away with it.