"The fact is, this is a balanced and effective budget" despite attempts to portray it otherwise, Paterson told his audience at the New York Hilton. He noted that it closed the largest deficit in the state's history--a $17.7-billion gap that had ballooned from $13 billion a few months earlier--and cut spending twice as much as any earlier state budget. The budget also implements reforms that will eliminate waste in the future, Paterson said, provided that lawmakers show the same kind of restraint after the economy begins to recover. He said that governments as well as individuals had overspent over the past 15 years, with one result being that 43 out of 50 states face a deficit this year.

Left to their own devices, "People in Albany will act like the party has started again" when revenues start improving, said Paterson. "As long as I'm governor, they will not." He said he expected passage of the budget, which was delayed due to the hospitalization of state Sen. Ruth Hassell-Thompson, to happen sometime on Thursday.

Paterson sounded the theme of shared sacrifice--"we all have to tighten our belts"--as well as the idea of spreading pain around equitably. He said the '09-'10 budget was "an equal opportunity offender" and pointed out that he resisted calls to "tax the rich" with surcharges for longer than was necessary. While a five-year tax increase on high-income earners would theoretically bring in more revenue over the long term, "we would have alleviated the deficits out beyond the fiscal year, but the people who were affected would've gone out of the state," Paterson said, drawing a laugh.