Cuomo Says Budget Will Defend New York Against Trump’s ‘Economic Missile’

Photo

ALBANY — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Tuesday unveiled a $168 billion spending plan that he said held echoes of the darkest days of the recession, necessitating a raft of ideas to raise revenue and counter the impact of a new federal tax plan that he warned could stall economic growth and devastate some taxpayers.

“Washington hit a button and launched an economic missile and it says ‘New York’ on it, and it’s headed our way,” Mr. Cuomo said. “You know what my recommendation is? Get out of the way.”

Central to that escape plan is a proposal to create a statewide payroll tax on employers that could effectively eliminate the state income tax on wages for many employees, one of several ways in which the governor hoped to circumvent the sharp reduction in deductibility of state and local taxes in the plan pushed through Congress in December, and signed by President Trump.

The governor also suggested that localities establish funds for things like education and public health, which would conceivably allow residents to donate to such causes and then deduct most of those donations from their federal taxes.

Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat with purported presidential ambitions, has been warning for months about the effects of the actions of Washington. He has said the federal changes will cost New York taxpayers more than $14 billion, even as the state itself faces a $4.4 billion deficit and further cuts to federal health spending.

In an interview, Mr. Cuomo explained his logic. “You want to attack the income tax structure?” he said of the federal plan that he spent much of the fall fighting. “Fine. We’ll restructure the tax code.”

On Tuesday, the governor’s anger at Mr. Trump and Republicans in Washington animated what is normally a dry presentation; it also gave him a political boogeyman to blame for budget woes — which should be useful in a year where he faces re-election.

“One move, all of that progress, wiped away,” the governor said of Mr. Trump’s tax plan, his voice rising. “We have to have answers.”

And those answers seemingly could touch on everything from internet shopping to buying snacks at vending machines, whose operators would be encouraged to go cashless — making tax collection easier.

One new idea for revenue is a 2 cents-per-milligram surcharge for the active opioid ingredient in prescription drugs, a root cause of the heroin epidemic that has seized the state and nation. The governor is also proposing an “internet fairness conformity tax,” a holdover idea that would require so-called “marketplace providers” like Amazon.com to collect sales tax. (It failed to win approval last year.) He reiterated a call for the closure of the carried interest loophole, a federal tax that allows some hedge fund managers to pay a lower tax rate on revenue from investments.

John J. Flanagan, the Republican leader of the Senate, praised elements of Mr. Cuomo’s plan, including a 3 percent increase in education funding, the largest chunk of state spending. He did not seem enthusiastic about the payroll tax idea, calling it “very challenging,” though he said he had several discussions with the governor about the issue.

In a small surprise, Mr. Cuomo also said that as the leaders of neighboring states like New Jersey and Massachusetts embrace recreational marijuana, he would ask the Department of Health to study the impact of legalization — including evaluating the economics of such a move — calling it “a hotly debated topic.” The remarks seemed to be a shift for Mr. Cuomo, 60, who was slow to embrace medical marijuana in the state, though he signed a limited legalization of such use in 2014.

Having been stung by bad news in the city’s subways during 2017’s so-called summer of hell, a phrase coined by the governor, Mr. Cuomo is proposing an “action plan” of $254 million for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. This would be money taken from financial settlements and the accelerated transfer of funds from a tiny payroll tax paid in the 12-county M.T.A. service area.

The proposed opioid tax would raise an estimated $127 million, while another plan — to add a 14 percent surcharge on profits made by health insurance policies — could raise even more: $140 million, according to administration estimates.

The state’s budget bills that are slated to be approved by April 1, the start of the fiscal year, are often a vehicle for nonfiscal policy, and this year was no exception. Mr. Cuomo used the speech as a platform to propose a range of changes to sexual harassment policies in the state in light of the #MeToo moment; he called it “a national crisis,” which was given new life in Albany last week when a powerful senator, Jeffrey D. Klein, was accused of forcibly kissing a staffer in 2015. (Mr. Klein was in the audience, and has denied the allegation.)

Even before the speech ended, Mr. Cuomo’s call for a payroll tax — and his heated assessment of the direness of the situation — was drawing criticism. E.J. McMahon, the founder of the Empire Center for Public Policy, a conservative economic think tank, said that the new $10,000 cap on the state and local deduction imposed by Washington “will not “devastate” the state.

“And @NYGovCuomo’s continued insistence on hyping the impact strains credulity,” Mr. McMahon said on Twitter.

Mr. Cuomo conceded that the tax plan would be “dramatic” and “very complicated,” but he pleaded with legislators on both sides of the aisle to embrace his plan for the state’s financial future.

“This is not a political issue, this is green, my friends,” Mr. Cuomo said, adding, “This is the fight of New York’s future.”