Gov. Andrew Cuomo took a final victory lap on the $132.6 billion budget this afternoon alongside Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos.

He also posed for a handful of photo ops with lawmakers and Lt. Gov. Bob Duffy. The news conference, somewhat hastily assembled, came before the Legislature formally adopted all the budget bills, but was needed early so that Silver could head home before sundown to observe the Jewish sabbath.

The news conference also came after the governor held a cabinet meeting on Tuesday to discuss the budget, but Skelos and Silver were not present.

Today is all very anti-climatic in many respects, especially compared to previous budget cycles that dragged on past the start of the 2012-13 fiscal year, April 1.

During the question and answer portion, Cuomo wouldn’t commit to a 2 percent limit on spending increases in next year’s budget.

“Obviously we would like to, but I don’t want to commit to a future budget. Let’s get this one passed,” he said.

State spending is increasing by 1.9 percent in this year’s budget, but spending overall in the budget is down by about $135 million. Cuomo earlier this week said that codifying the 2 percent spending limit wouldn’t pass the Legislature, though the Republican-led Senate has pushed for it in its last several one-house budget bills.

Senate Republicans seemed to outnumber Democrats at the news conference held in the Red Room and the Democratic governor has worked exceeding well with the 32-member conference. Republicans are fighting to keep control of the Senate and Cuomo has been in part able to hold sensitive policy issues like redistricting over them to achieve his legislative goals.

But Cuomo as usual side-stepped questions on whether he would like to see Skelos stay majority leader next year.

“We’ll get to politics later on in the year. One of the things that has worked for us is we’ve kept the politics on the side and we’ve done government work. We still have a legislative session as the majority leader spoke about,” he said. “Thanks for the question, though.”

The Senate is divided 32-29 with the vacancy currently under a special-election recount. A 63rd seat is being added barring a lawsuit brought on by Senate Democrats.

One of the questions among Albany’s chattering classes is whether Cuomo wants a GOP-led Senate at all during his time in office.

The governor also defended the education spending in the budget, which will increase by $805 million, thanks to the tax code overhaul from December.

“Would we have liked to have raised it more? Of course. But is 4 percent a very significant raise considering where we are. I think it is,” Cuomo said.

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