Cuomo flips SEIU in New York budget battle
By D.J. McGuire | Tuesday, March 1st, 2011 | Policy
So this is what happens when the budget cutter has a D next to his name (New York Post):
New York has few budget-busters as big as Medicaid, the health-care program for the “poor” that now covers one-fifth of all state residents at costs that have grown by fully 80 percent over the past decade — to a staggering $1 billion per week.
Amazing, then, that the task force appointed by Gov. Cuomo to rewrite the Medicaid rules may have come up with a formula that will finally begin to bring the program under control.
Consider: The plan cuts program spending by nearly $1 billion compared to the current fiscal year and some $2.5 billion from projected program growth for 2011-12.
More amazing still: New York’s health-care cartel — the hospitals and the health-care-workers union, which in the past have joined forces to make Medicaid matters worse — has signed on to this sweeping overhaul.
It “resulted in pain, but it was shared pain,” said George Gresham, president of Local 1199.
FYI, Local 1199 is New York City’s massive amalgamated health care worker union, part of SEIU. That they would have any role in helping bend down the Medicaid cost curve is a political earthquake of about 7.0 on New York’s political Richter scale.
Even better, the union and the hospitals took aim at the trial lawyers. As Bill Hammond explained in the New York Daily News, tort reform in medicine was so important to the industry that they gladly took a $2.3 billion cut as a trade-off.
The ink was barely dry on the proposals when Cuomo surgically implanted them in his budget and – get this – threatened a government shutdown if the divided and politically confused Legislature didn’t pass the whole thing by April 1 (NY Post).
The events in New York – as compared to, say, Wisconsin – are very, very revealing.
First of all, it provides an unexpected and somewhat painful example of how much partisanship matters today. When a Republican governor asks for structural reforms impacting a major faction of Democrats, the entire left mobilizes as if it’s 1968 all over again. Make the Governor a Democrat, and the wisdom of reform suddenly trumps political solidarity.
That one of the very unions leading the anti-reform charge in Wisconsin has manned the ramparts for (an admittedly different) reform in New York gives the (D) by Andrew Cuomo’s name all the more weight.
That said, it’s one thing to have a built-in political advantage for austerity; it’s quite another to use it, and Cuomo is using it big time – to the point of refusing to go along with his own fellow Democrats in the Assembly who are desperate to resurrect the “millionaire’s tax” (New York Post).
Now, Cuomo still has a ways to go here. The Democrats in the Assembly are not used to a political friend in the Governor’s Mansion telling them what they don’t want to hear. Meanwhile, no one really knows what will happen in the State Senate (where the majority Republicans are not known for limiting government spending). Still, he has already managed to flip the health care union, something few thought he could actually do.
If he really does pull all of this off, dissatisfaction with Obama and a Republican field looking increasingly stale could drag Cuomo the son where his father refused to go two decades ago – into a presidential campaign.
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Former candidate for Board of Supervisors in Spotsylvania, current blogger, economics teacher, and long-rumored windbag. There are two causes closest to the heart: steering the country away from the social democratic nonsense that is sinking Europe, and convincing the rest of the "rightosphere" that the NBA really is a joy to watch.
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8 Responses to "Cuomo flips SEIU in New York budget battle"
Granted, there is some telling information about partisanship in how unions react to a Democrat vs. a Republican. People on both sides of the aisle are more likely to work with somebody from a political party they trust than one they do not. Another good example of this is the difference in Republican reaction to the federal healthcare reform as opposed to Mitt Romney’s reform in Massachusetts. However, I think you overstate the case here because of the key difference; Scott Walker won’t accept the compromise offered by the unions to balance the budget, he insists on eliminating collective bargaining. If Cuomo did the same, the unions wouldn’t back him either.
Isaac,
Although I agree with the thrust of your post, it’s a factual misrepresentation that Gov Walker is “eliminating collective bargaining” when he is simply restricting it to wages. Anyway I think that the unions wouldn’t accept Walker giving in on collective bargaining if he still insisted on preventing garnishment of wages for dues. That’s the real sticking point. Also his action could be reversed at any point in the future as it’s not in the WI constitution. Mitch Daniels did eliminate public sector collective bargaining in Indiana. FDR himself railed against it. It’s not like this is going to have a material effect in the next decade or more since govt workers expecting big wage/benefit increases now must think they live in Greece 20 years ago or believe that Obama is the Messiah.
DJ
While ts possible that Cuomo would have a shot in 2016 it’s silly to think that Dems are going to jettison Obama for a budget cutting Dem. People continue to forget that the majority of Dems Agree with Obama’s policies and attitudes and are fans of outright socialism. They are the ones voting in Dem primaries.
Val, you weren’t paying attention to the Dem primaries….Obama wasn’t the guy the left. He was to the right of all the other Dems running, with the possible exception of Clinton (and that depends on what day of the week it is and what the polls look like that day).
Yes how silly of me. The most liberal Senator (rare distinction) was the most conservative Dem in 2008. I was concentrating on his votes other than Present and his revealing comments like “being behind enemy lines” in a private company. The rhetorical headfake to the center of “Europe” I just missed somehow. Glad you caught it though.
This has less to do with having a D or an R after your name, and everything to do with one of the major things that impacts every negotiation – trust.
Walker did not have any trust, any good will or any relationship with the various unions his budget plan impacted. They never saw it before he dropped it, the media picked up on it and he alerted the national guard. I actually got the story about the national guard internally before I ever saw the budget.
Anybody who has ever been in any kind of negotiation knows that without trust between the parties, you’re not going to go anywhere fast. And that trust isn’t simply built by virtue of having a D after your name.
Cuomo did things the right way – he kept the unions in the loop, worked with them to get the concessions and didn’t try and overreach. It’s amazing how much you can get by just being polite, isn’t it? And when Cuomo announced his plan, he didn’t try and turn the budget into some kind of crusade to help burnish his national credentials pre-2012.
This is what I meant when I said that Walker handled this whole situation poorly. Had Cuomo rammed through a plan like Walker did, that D behind his name would not have saved him the wrath of SEIU or anyone else. But, unlike Walker, Cuomo didn’t treat the unions as his mortal enemy, and that made a big difference.
Yes, exactly; what if this approach were adopted by the leaders in the House and the Senate? Let’s agree that we need to deal with the deficit and the debt; but right now, the recovery is fragile. Let’s not blow it up. Let’s agree to the President’s recommendations about cuts in the military, let’s reduce federal jobs by 5%, let’s delay NASA’s manned mission to the moon, let’s eliminate earmarks, let’s deal with social security by gradually increasing the retirement age to 70; let’s use a more modest formula for COLA in federal programs. Frankly, these are doable if leaders adopt the respect for their peers, and the results will reduce federal spending as a percentage of GDP to around 20% where it should be.
While these are good points from Brian (and even Mike B.!! today) I still on balance agree more with Isaac. The NY unions rightly or wrongly think they will be able to game the system as long as they have their various negotiating benefits (Not rights!) intact. These benefits have been abused by the unions everywhere including WI. I’m Not saying the unions are different from anyone else with privileged positions. But if a leftist Dem ends up at the same place as conservatives in balancing the budget and keeping government responsive and limited it doesn’t bother me.
If I were Walker I would “compromise” by giving collective bargaining on benefits but limited to the CPI and with the removal of all the abuses the unions enacted during the past such as their sweetheart medical plan. I would also insist on blocking garnishment of wages for union dues.
Kumbaya.
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