$2B Or Not $2B

And now, for something completely different.

With apologies to Monty Python, Tuesday's special economic session of the state legislature seemed to be anything but. Instead of three men in a room, it was five men at a table, live on TV across the Empire State, showing us that, even in a time of economic crisis, the people who lead New York's government will lock up into pure partisanship.

David Paterson blamed Dean Skelos. Skelos blamed Malcolm Smith. Sheldon Silver blamed Skelos. Jim Tedisco blamed Silver. The Albany Philharmonic Legislature in harmonic covergence.

And in the end, the $2 billion in mid-year budget cuts the governor proposed were never even introduced for legislators to consider.

Here's why, according to people in the know.

Paterson has projected bold leadership in calling for the cuts and looking New York straight in the face and telling us: "we're in big trouble." Three out of four New Yorkers claimed to be ready to suck it up.

When no one (Silver, Skelos) helped him come up with ways to shave $2B from this year's budget, he came up with his own; unpopular reductions to things like education and health care (Rochester hospitals would have lost $45 million in Paterson's plan.) Where else could a budget be cut but in its largest expenditures?

But what good Democrat could support those sorts of things. Republicans couldn't either.

Paterson saw this, especially in his party's newly minted majority in the senate, where Smith, the leader to be of that house of government, could see his coalition shredded even before hands go on bibles in January. During the 90 minute conversation amongst the five men, Skelos challenged Smith on whether he even had the votes to consider all of the cuts.

The governor had called for simple "yes/no" votes on his proposal. But he knew he could never get it done?

In the end, it may be why legislators never held Paterson's cuts in their hands. And it's why, for the first time in the gathering of a special legislative session, not a single vote was cast.

All this to the cost of $75,000 to $100,000.

So where's it leave New York State? Waiting for Paterson's '09-'10 budget proposal in December. The GOP asked for it, to understand the larger context of the state's new spending agenda. It'll be arriving in a rush with plenty of rough edges to it. And it'll need to cut more than double what Paterson asked for this time around.

Sounds like a no-win situation. The kind that could motivate someone; someone who'd always seen Washington, not the governor's mansion as his next step, begin checking the packing of a parachute. The kind that can land you in a vacant U.S. Senate seat, should its current occupant be called up to, says, the office of Secretary of State.


Talk about political bailout.

Paterson never asked for this in the first place. Eight months after being thrust into the assignment of rescuing the executive branch's credibility from scandal, perhaps it's not impossible to think that, with partisanship about ready to tear state government apart, his skills may be better used on Capitol Hill. Would he call his own number should Hillary Clinton get the news from B.O.?

Either way, New York State is no closer to pulling itself out of its own stranglehold.

And what's different about that?