Cuomo's Lesson for House Republicans

New York's Governor exposes the fraud of 'baseline budgeting.

(The Wall Street Journal) - Move over, Chris Christie. New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo is bidding to join the New Jersey Republican as the national spokesman for fiscal sanity, and he's doing so in a politically clever way that House Republicans could learn from.

The budget that Mr. Cuomo unveiled this week closes a gaping deficit with major budget reductions, calling for spending cuts in state hiring, education, health care, aid to universities and payments to cities. The plan would balance the Empire State's $135 billion budget without a dime of new taxes or borrowing. Remarkably, if his budget passed, the state would spend $3.5 billion less than it did last year.

And remember, we're talking about politically liberal New York, not New Hampshire. If you're surprised by this, you should see long-time Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who looks as though he stuck his finger in the electric socket.

These cuts are impressive on their own, but Mr. Cuomo's real conceptual breakthrough is to expose the rigged-game of "baseline budgeting." This is a gambit by which spending increases automatically each year even before a Governor submits his budget. The "baseline" grows each year due to spending formulas that legislatures build into the law even before they take a single vote.