Eliot Spitzer’s latest big policy pronouncement, delivered via his running mate, Senate Minority Leader David Paterson, is illuminating. “Stem cell research will be a centerpiece of our health care policy,” Mr. Paterson said at the Columbia University Medical Center, according to a dispatch from the Associated Press. To that end, Messrs. Spitzer and Paterson would try to sell voters on a $1 billion bond issue to fund such research for a decade. He elaborated by saying he and Mr. Spitzer mean embryonic stem cell research.

It’s a terrible idea. Aside from the moral arguments that spark debate among people of good faith on either side of the issue, mounting evidence suggests that embryonic stem cells aren’t the panacea some make them out to be. Embryonic stem cells have proven difficult to harness in the lab. Much of the privately funded research is now exploring adult stem cells, which are showing great promise and raise none of the ethical problems that the use of embryos does.

But this isn’t even really about the science. It’s about public debt, something of which New Yorkers already have far too much. On a per capita basis, New York’s state-supported debt is more than double the national average. Between 1990 and the 2005 enacted budget, New York’s debt increased 287%. In the 2004-05 fiscal year, New York taxpayers spent $4.1 billion in interest payments, and the state’s comptroller estimates $5.8 billion in debt service by 2009-10.

It was bad enough when Attorney General Spitzer started charging up and down Wall Street hurting New Yorkers’ bottom lines with his misguided regulatory efforts. Now he wants to mortgage their children in pursuit of bad science. If he’s smart, Mr. Spitzer will take a break from campaigning for a bit before New Yorkers start to wonder if there’s a bad idea he hasn’t had.