New York’s economy is never so bad that Albany won’t try its damnedest to make it worse.
Latest case in point: State Senate Finance Committee Chairman Carl Kruger’s hare-brained scheme to protect public-employee benefits by making health insurance more expensive for everybody else.
And to kill a lot of jobs while he’s at it.
It’s all part of the Brooklyn Democrat’s scheme to provide what he terms a “pain-free” solution to Albany’s multibillion-dollar budget crisis — with “pain-free” meaning “posing no threat whatsoever to the jobs, pensions or fringe benefits of New York’s legions of paper-shuffling public employees.”
Taxpayers, in this construction, are meant merely to shut up — and then pay up.
Specifically, as The Post reported yesterday, Kruger wants to slap a new billion-dollar tax on health-care providers — insurance carriers, in particular.
But it won’t stop there. It never does.
What Kruger is proposing is in fact a tax on all New Yorkers with health insurance, because the carriers will simply pass the impost along.
For New Yorkers who buy their own insurance, the implications are obvious.
For private-sector employers already struggling with the economy, the consequences are no happier. Many already face enormous health-care costs for their workers. What will they do?
* Some employers will reduce benefits to current employees.
* Some likely will drop health coverage altogether.
* Still others may resort to layoffs.
* And few and far between will be the companies that will be able to afford actually to expand employment.
Think of the scheme as Carl Kruger’s sure-fire jobs killer!
This all fits a pattern: In March, the Legislature passed a budget loaded with $8 billion in new taxes — while increasing spending by nearly 10 percent.
The public-employee unions just loved it — but New York’s economy, and tax revenues, continued to tank.
Hence the latest hole, which Kruger & Co. seem determined to tax their way out of again.
This time, they may not get away with it. Taxpayer outcry has already forced Albany to backtrack on a planned $25-a-vehicle license-plate tax, which would have brought in $129 million.
Kruger’s tax is eight times as big — though maybe he’s hoping New Yorkers are too dumb to notice.
We think maybe it’s Kruger who’s too dumb to notice what’s going on.
He may be safely ensconced in his Brooklyn district, but this month’s election returns in Westchester and Nassau sent a clear enough message for the senator’s suburban colleagues to pick up on.
The Legislature will tax and spend at its peril — and never mind what the unions think about it all.