Gov. David Paterson, who is in Washington, DC to lobby along with fellow governors in hopes of getting Congress to approve FMAP funding, said he’s “getting the signals” that perhaps some of the Medicaid cash will be approved after all, but warned: “It won’t be the full $1 billion.”

Asked what steps the state might have to take if the FMAP cash on which it (and NYC) have been counting in their respective budgets does not materialize, Paterson replied:

“Well, I can’t offer specifics because we haven’t decided where we would cut. We’re not going to borrow money to get out of this crisis.”

“We would probably have to lay off workers….In fact, we would have to lay off workers sooner than our plan of January 1, and we would probably have to have something like a one percent cut to all services across the board, which I don’t know, particularly in the area of health care, where we’ve cut over $5 billion now, and education, where we’ve cut over $2 billion, that they could sustain additional cuts to that extent.”

Here’s a link to the governors’ press conference in Washington. Paterson’s remarks start at 29:50.

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