Ben Smith writes for RedState.com about the New York City mayor’s latest failure.
New York City’s self-described democratic socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has made history, just not the kind worth bragging about. Barely months into office, he has blown past a statutory budget deadline for the first time since 2015, declared a fiscal crisis of “historic magnitude,” and responded to a $5.4 billion budget gap the way any good socialist would: by asking someone else to pay for it.
Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin appeared together at City Hall on Tuesday to announce they would delay the executive budget, originally due May 1, until May 12 while lobbying Albany to bail out a city that, under their preferred ideology, was supposed to be thriving.
The pair are pressing for more direct state aid and a reduction in the state’s pass-through entity tax credit, a change they claim would generate nearly $1 billion in new revenue. In other words: tax the job creators a little more and hope no one notices. …
… “New York City faces a budget crisis of a historic magnitude. We inherited a deficit larger than any since the Great Recession.”
Yes, he inherited it. That word, “inherited,” is doing an enormous amount of heavy lifting here. It’s the rhetorical equivalent of burning down a kitchen and then blaming the previous owner for installing a stove. Former Mayor Eric Adams left the city with $8 billion in reserves; Mamdani’s team has since claimed those numbers masked deeper structural issues tied to recurring expenses. Conveniently, Mamdani and his allies have argued that the prior administration “poisoned” the budget by underestimating long-term costs.
Adams, for his part, offered a pointed two-word rebuttal to Mamdani’s broader governing philosophy.
“Free is a lie.”
Truer words have rarely been spoken in New York City politics.
Mamdani insists the gap cannot be closed through cuts alone.
