Congressman Lee Zeldin says cutting taxes is top-priority if elected in November.
Less than 45 days away from Election Day, Rep. Zeldin is focusing on ways he could, in fact, cut taxes for New Yorkers.
He said at a campaign event on Friday that he would end the estate tax, personal income tax, and look at cutting back the Medicaid program as it exists presently.
Zeldin said there would be room to cut taxes if Medicaid was peeled back. “I believe Medicaid serves an important purpose,” he began. “We need to protect Medicaid in New York. But we can actually go line by line into the many billions of dollars.”
The state’s Medicaid program is among the costliest in the U.S. It’s the biggest spend in the state budget every year, too. Former Governor Andrew Cuomo made it a priority early in his tenure to find efficiencies and other issues within the state’s Medicaid program to save money.
He found plenty.
However, Zeldin said during that campaign event in the North Country that it comes down to preventing taxpayers from getting cheated.
Critics say cuts to Medicaid are impossible right now given the state of the economy and overall cost of healthcare.
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