Gov. Paterson yesterday warned that the politically popular plan to impose higher income taxes on the wealthy would cost New York jobs and drive people out of the state.
“What I’m saying is if you tax the rich right now, while the economy is disintegrating, you’re going to lose jobs and you’re also going to lose from the tax base as people leave the state,” Paterson told reporters after addressing the Council on Foreign Relations.
“In my opinion, you’re [compounding] the problem, not eradicating it. I don’t think that taxing the rich is the best way to go right now.”
Paterson was responding to a Post report yesterday that he had appeared weak to a gathering of powerful business leaders by suggesting that the only way to stop the tax was to call Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan), its main supporter.
Silver and the Assembly’s Democratic majority have been under intense pressure from public-employee labor unions and their allies in the Working Families Party to hike state income taxes on the rich to avoid spending cuts sought by Paterson in his proposed state budget.