As we progress through this new year at the start of a new decade, the looming $6 billion New York State budget shortfall is a harsh reminder that some things just never change in Albany. Uncontrolled state spending, unfunded mandates, and an anti-business regulatory climate continue to plague our state. 

Tax hikes on families and businesses to cover the costs of these reckless policies have driven millions out of the state over the last decade. According to an analysis of U.S. Census data by the Empire Center for Public Policy, close to 1.4 million people have left the state since 2010. New York lost more residents than any other state, and this is our fourth consecutive decline in population, according to the Census data.

Leaders have a responsibility to reverse these trends. Instead, the Democrat leadership in Albany largely ignores the clear warning signals.

This year’s budget woes are mainly driven by increased Medicaid costs, or what Gov. Andrew Cuomo calls a “structural imbalance.” However, a recent study from the Mercatus Center of George Mason University concluded that up to 433,000 New York residents “with income above the allowed limit” are enrolled in Medicaid, and the number of New Yorkers getting benefits despite earning too much to qualify rose “by more than 80 percent” from 2012 to 2017. Perhaps this is one reason why our per-capita Medicaid costs are already the highest in the nation. New York spends more than the states of Florida and Texas combined, even though both states each have larger populations. 

The fact that the state budget gap is at the highest level since the Great Recession, while the national economy is so strong, should lead to a discussion about our Medicaid program and the state’s tax and regulatory climate. We also need to deal with the cold, hard reality that the state simply cannot afford everything it tries to do. The $100 million in your hard-earned tax dollars an unelected commission has committed to spend on public campaign financing is one easy example. 

Unfortunately, the Democrats are already talking about raising taxes before engaging in any serious examination of the real problems behind the massive deficit. Only in the politics of Albany could one continue to believe that our state has a revenue problem and not a spending problem. 

The priorities for the upcoming legislative session should be to rein in spending and reduce taxes so we can pursue an aggressive economic-development strategy. A good start would be to practice what we preach on capping spending, requiring a two-thirds majority vote by the legislature before raising state taxes and increasing the Manufacturer Real Property Tax Credit to help spur economic development.

If we want to create a brighter future for New York State in the coming decade, Albany must start learning from its history of failed tax and regulatory policies instead of continuing to repeat them. It’s time to reimagine New York.      

Robert Smullen is the Republican representative of the 118th New York Assembly District, which encompasses Hamilton and Fulton counties as well as parts of Herkimer, Oneida, and St. Lawrence counties.

You know these words, but how often do you stop to think about them? “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…”

They belong, of course, to the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution. That remarkable document is not just the blueprint for our political system. Its Preamble is also a profoundly aspirational call to arms. Because when you read it, it’s hard not to ask yourself how we’re doing — at establishing justice, promoting the general welfare, securing the blessings of liberty, and, in sum, creating a more perfect union.

It’s especially hard to avoid asking this question now, when the warnings of democracy in retreat are all around us. For many, the creeping authoritarianism that has taken hold in any number of countries — Russia, China, Bolivia, Turkey, the Philippines, and Hungary, among others — seems alarmingly on the ascendant.

You can also look around and find developments that make you wonder whether the world’s democracies have much cause for complacency. Worrisome environmental trends, population growth, climate change, the ills that go along with rising consumption — like mountains of trash and depletion of natural resources — all suggest a world unable to rein in its appetites.

Yet it’s undeniable that we’ve come a long way in this country and in other democracies, expanding women’s rights and the rights of minorities, ending child labor, banning nuclear testing, improving literacy, building strong economies. The world’s most vibrant economies and most nimble military forces remain mostly in the hands of democratic nations: the U.S., France, Great Britain, Germany, Japan, and Australia.

I don’t believe that people around the world favor authoritarianism. They prefer a voice in government. But most of all, they want decent lives for themselves and their children. They are not so wedded to a democratic system that if they see no improvement in their lives, they’ll reject authoritarianism. So democratic governments have to perform. They have to meet the expectations of their people and improve the quality of their citizens’ lives.

In the U.S., many Americans, worried about the direction of their country, wonder whether it is making progress toward the ideals of the Preamble. We seem to advance, fall back, and then move forward again, all in incremental steps.

What do we mean when we talk about “a more perfect Union”? I suppose we think of material progress. But more fundamentally, I hope, we think about the expansion of human freedom and progress toward the goals set out simply and eloquently in the Preamble. There’s a sense that we’re all in this American experience together: it brings us together and connects us with our past, present and future.

The American experiment in representative democracy is always a work in progress. The results are always in doubt. Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg — “whether a nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure” — will probably resonate for as long as we’re a nation.

We face immense systemic problems at the moment: racial discrimination, wage stagnation, staggering income inequality, political polarization, the pernicious effects of too much money washing around in the system, the degradation of civil discourse. It’s not a given that we’ll be able to resolve them, and we always have to be alert to the fact that our freedoms and rights can be eroded. So, to prevent this erosion, we have to step up to the task of responsible citizenship.

This is a challenge for every generation. We’ve stepped up to it in the past, through world wars, the Civil War, economic recessions, and depressions. As Americans, we believe in a set of democratic ideals, basic rights, fundamental freedoms, and the notion that all people are created equal and all are entitled to dignity. These are ideas that give us cohesiveness and identify us.

But we cannot take our ability to deliver on them for granted. Without a renewal of energy and commitment to the democratic values of the Constitution, without acting on the call issued by the Preamble, we could lose them.        

Lee Hamilton, 88, is a senior advisor for the Indiana University (IU) Center on Representative Government, distinguished scholar at IU Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, and professor of practice at the IU O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Hamilton, a Democrat, was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years (1965-1999), representing a district in south central Indiana.