The city might have to layoff 4,400 teachers after all, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, just a few days after he granted them a reprieve by freezing their salaries rather than cutting jobs.
This is one of many decisions the mayor might have to revisit because Congress, in a surprise move last week, rejected extra Medicaid dollars many states had expected and included them in their budgets.
The independent mayor told WOR radio that New York City had counted on $600 million of the additional Medicaid funds.
“Everything will be up in the air,” Bloomberg said, when asked if the teachers might have to be laid off.
“We don’t have to necessarily cut in any one area but overall we’d have to come up with some way to raise an extra $600 million or reduce expenses by $600 million,” he said.
On Thursday, Bloomberg met with New York’s Congressional delegation to emphasize the importance of getting the extra Medicaid dollars but the city must finalize its $63 billion budget before its new fiscal year starts on July 1.
“If they (Congress) don’t have it done by June 28, we’re going to have to have some very serious cuts in the budget,” he said.
On Wednesday, Bloomberg said he would freeze the salaries of the city’s approximately 80,000 teachers for two years—which would save $400 million in the new fiscal year—instead of going ahead with the layoffs.
Medicaid is the state-federal health plan for the poor, elderly and disabled, and New York City has one of the nation’s biggest and costliest programs.
More people have qualified for Medicaid during the recession. In March, 2.832 million people were covered, up 11 percent from two years ago, the state comptroller said.
The mayor’s dilemma is complicated by the state’s inability to enact its $135 billion budget, which was due on April 1.
The Democratic-led legislature and Governor David Paterson have clashed over $2.5 billion of cuts the Democratic governor proposed in education and healthcare.
Paterson, in an interview with WOR radio on Thursday, said he feared the legislature might not enact a new budget until after the November elections.
A November budget would set a record for New York. Though its budgets often have been late, the current record for tardiness is August 4, 1997, a state budget spokesman said, under the Republican Pataki administration.
The state stands to lose $1 billion if the extra Medicaid money is not approved, increasing its deficit by a billion dollars to $10.2 billion, Paterson said.
(Source: Reuters)
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4 Responses
The problem with cutting Medicaid would be that those who would truly need it would be the ones who get cut NOT the illegal aliens and lowlife drug users who do not deserve it THEY would still get it.
These politicians always cut the ones who truly deserve to have the benefit of some program.
The teachers should be cut because for one thing many sit in disciplinary rooms where they get full salary and do nothing because they did something for which they were told to get out of the classrooms and yet are still paid because of the unions.
Get rid of the dead weight.
Besides the boys are being often deliberately held back and doped up on Ritalin with hogwash excuses that they ‘are discipline probelms’ when the truth is they simply do not want to teach them properly.
American stuidents overall are behind other western countries in how well they are prepared inschool.
In short because of the unions the Teachers are doing a lousy job.
Firing the worst ones should have been done a long time ago anyway, and now to save money, it is imperative and will help the students.
I tis a win win sistuation for everyone except the corrupt greedy unons, who do not deserve to keep winning at taxpayer expense.
They can cut pay. If a freeze saves $400 million (and all that was frozen was a cost of living increase of a few percent), imagine what a significant pay cut would bring in. While some teachers might quit where will they go (work for parochial schools at half the pay? perhaps they’ll see if Lehman brothers and Bear Stearns are hiring?).
The government will not save any money!!!!!!!!!!!!
All these people that will lose their jobs will get all benefit programs that the governments offers for the poor. They will not have to pay taxes, so they will end up getting the same amount of money and will not have to do any work for it.
It might be from a different pocket, however, at the end of the day the government is encouraging people to stay home with rewards. One day there will not be enough people to give their hard earned money to the government to pass on to the “poor,” then the government will have to print more money for the poor.
#3- that’s only half — faced with the possibility of unemployment, not to mention the real thing, they then stop spending money thereby hurting the merchants they patronize . A salary cut, with no threat of total unemployment, is less traumatic.