The authorities of New York presented this Tuesday a budget proposal that foresees important cuts in education and health and a temporary increase of taxes to the richest to compensate the fiscal hole of the state in case a federal aid of about 15,000 million does not arrive of dollars.
New York, the state hardest hit by covid-19, calculates that this is the amount that stopped entering as a result of the pandemic and asks Washington for support to cover that deficit.
Thus, the state governor, Democrat Andrew Cuomo, presented on Tuesday two draft accounts for the next fiscal year (which begins in April) and that take into account the possibility that the state receives those 15,000 million or that it only obtain 6,000, what would be “the worst possible scenario”.
In that situation, the budget would include a cut of about 2 billion dollars in education, about 600 million in health and about 900 million in other areas.
In addition, Cuomo proposes a temporary tax increase for those who earn more than 5 million dollars a year, with a rate that would go from 8.82% to 10.82%.
The governor, a centrist Democrat, has traditionally opposed raising the tax burden on large fortunes, something that other members of his party have defended, but he believes that now it would be absolutely necessary to try to balance the accounts.
Cuomo, in any case, insisted that the federal government must assume its responsibility and help a state that “has paid a bill for COVID that no other state in the country has paid.”
President-elect Joe Biden has proposed allocating a $ 350 billion item to support state and local governments within his new stimulus plan, but its approval and how the money is distributed is up to Congress.
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