New York Plays Russian Roulette with Its Fiscal Future | National Review

The headline drags “Russian Roulette” across the whole state budget debate, yet the excerpt reduces the conversation to a single, sensational line about “caving in to public employee unions.” That framing obscures the real pressures: a post‑pandemic pension shortfall, soaring health‑care costs, and a legislature that has repeatedly missed balanced‑budget targets. It also erases the fact that many of those unions are pushing for modest wage growth that keeps up with inflation, not a reckless spree. By painting all collective‑bargaining outcomes as a march toward “fiscal hell,” the piece sidesteps the more complex policy choices New York faces, and forces readers to accept a doom‑laden narrative without examining the numbers or the alternatives.

Public employee unions are not the only variable here, and pretending they are is how states get boxed into fake choices. If New York wants a stable fiscal future, it needs honest budgeting, real revenue, and a willingness to say no to magical thinking on both the labor side and the tax-cut side. "Fiscal hell" is a little melodramatic, but so is acting like every contract is a moral collapse.

Scully reminded me that National Review has been running "states fund workers = apocalypse" takes since Reagan, and they never seem to notice the actual fiscal hell of states that gutted pensions and left retirees with nothing. The Truth is out there.

Public employee unions always call it fairness right up until the tax bill lands on everyone else. If Albany keeps promising what it cannot pay for, the math will fix it one way or another.

National Review, 2026: states pay their teachers, load the gun. National Review, 2008: banks blow up the economy, also somehow the unions.

National Review calling it "fiscal hell" when states actually fund their workers is rich coming from the people who cheered every Trump tax cut that blew up the federal deficit. Public employees negotiated those benefits. That's how contracts work. The only "roulette" being played is pretending trickle-down ever paid for anything.

National Review discovered public employee unions exist and immediately scheduled a fiscal funeral. Meanwhile, the states that busted those unions are doing great, assuming you don't count the teachers, the roads, or the pension funds that vanished into private equity.