Sharpen The Budget Scissors

Tough economic times demand hard economic decisions. Mayor Bloomberg is sharpening the blades now. He’s ordered $1.5 billion in city-agency cuts. That breaks down to 2.5% this year and 5% next year. He spoke of reducing expenses and raising revenues. Advocates for the city’s largest departments will undoubtedly be heard from very soon. Each will complain that slashed budgets were unfairly decided and will unfairly hurt New York. We know better. All city agencies waste millions of our tax dollars. All city agencies must undergo severe budget cutting ... just like the rest of us. New Yorkers will suffer to an extent, but we’ll survive. We’ve been through worse before. Besides, smaller government doing the same amount of work, or ideally more work, seems like a pretty good idea … except to those who squander our money and must work for it.