Leadership Quote by George Pataki

Power, in Albany, is always somebody else’s problem. Pataki’s line performs a familiar piece of executive self-positioning: the governor as responsible adult with a plan, the Legislature as the unruly roommate who won’t take out the trash. “All I can do” is the key tell. It sounds humble, even resigned, but it’s a strategic narrowing of agency. He’s not admitting weakness so much as pre-building an alibi for whatever comes next: a late budget, a messy compromise, a fiscal hole no one wants to own.

The verbs do the work. “Submit” is procedural, technocratic, almost clerical; it frames budgeting as a neutral, rules-bound act rather than a political fight over winners and losers. Then he “make[s] the case,” shifting into persuasion mode, implying reasonableness and evidence. If the Legislature doesn’t “act,” they’re not just disagreeing; they’re failing a basic duty. That last word is a quiet moral cudgel.

Context matters because New York budgeting is built for brinkmanship: separate powers, competing constituencies, and a long tradition of end-of-session drama. Pataki, a Republican governor often negotiating with a Democratic Assembly (and factional Senate dynamics), routinely had incentives to look like the lone steward of restraint facing a spend-happy capitol. The sentence is less a description of process than a positioning statement for the cameras: I’ve done my part; if the system disappoints you, blame them.