Conservatives back Spitzer plans in latest surprise from Albany
BRIAN ACKLEY Political Columnist
There was a moment a few weeks ago - actually there have been lots of moments this month - that harkens back to the good old days of Albany's annual budget assault.

At one in another mindless string of bill signing ceremonies held recently, Gov. Eliot Spitzer was ready to introduce the man who has quickly become his archenemy, Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno. "Did I hear somebody say profligate," Spitzer asked.

On another recent occasion, the newly elected state CEO had this to say about the GOP's own Bruno-backed spending blueprint. "To say it's Enron accounting is to be unfair to Enron."

March madness takes on its own definition in Albany, when the tortuous budget process makes it appear everyone is just a clock-tick away from taking his ball and going home. This year, though, Eliot's effrontery is sharper, quicker, wittier and more focused than Bruno's, which when you think it over is pretty much the case about everything when you compare the two.

So while everything appears to be the same on the surface, the undercurrents are flowing in a decidedly different direction this spring, and not just because the governor's office is swinging its voter popularity sickle every chance it gets.

For one, the state's influential Conservative party has lined up squarely behind Spitzer, a rather stunning development for party leader Michael Long, who during last year's election labeled him as someone who would "have little enthusiasm for protecting taxpayers." In abandoning Bruno and the GOP, and not to be outdone by the gov's flair for the dramatic, he turned to William Shakespeare, an appropriate choice because his party's allegiance switch is potentially more than just a tempest in a teapot.

"Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows, and in 2007, I find myself in the exact same position," Long wrote in a letter to Spitzer.

Not that Joe Bruno was ever about good government, mind you, but his reckless budget ideas underscore the increasingly dangerous struggle - dangerous to taxpayers that is - in keeping the sliver of standing they have left in Albany. In this budget, it's all about snagging as much support as it can steal, the state's mounting and knee-buckling debt be damned.

To be fair, it's not as if the first thing Spitzer did after taking his oath was throw the emergency brake on state spending. But in comparison to the GOP's wild fiscal fantasies, he's so far to the right that Rush Limbaugh would blush.

Spitzer's $120.6 billion blueprint actually increases spending somewhere around 7 or 8 percent, depending on who you believe, but unarguably twice the average rate of inflation, including an unprecedented influx of an additional $1.4 billion in education aid - almost the same amount he's proposed trimming in Medicaid spending in hospitals and nursing homes.

Bruno all but whips out a skirt and pompoms in leading the cheers for the health care unions. His "plan" would add an additional $3 billion or so on top of the governor's current proposed largesse. Exactly who's the Republican here?

It's unlikely Spitzer will resort to dropping napalm in an effort to get everything he wants in this latest power prance, although his predecessor, George Pataki, did it shortly into his new administration in 1995, shutting down state government when a budget didn't pass on schedule. Another nearby Democratic governor, New Jersey's Jon Corzine, successfully pulled that ploy just last year.

But while the rhetoric has been more entertaining than usual, no side has gone so far as to draw a definitive line in the sand - yet - which means a deal will probably get done, maybe not in time to have an actual legislative vote by April 1, but in principle by then.

That gives everyone enough wiggle room to insist that only a technicality prevented an on-time budget.

Which means that for those among us who always enjoy what the budget show brings will temporarily be denied some of that fun. According to widely published reports, Bruno recently complained to Spitzer that he was "embarrassing me in the papers." To which the governor so elegantly and aptly replied, "No, Joe, you're doing that to yourself."

(Opinions expressed here are those of the author.)