Less than one month into his term as mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, the candidate who ran on affordability, is calling for huge increases in taxes. Are you surprised?
Mamdani hosted a presser on Wednesday where the city’s budget was the topic, and as you might expect, there’s a shortfall. And while you can’t blame Mamdani for spending the city into the bright red, you can blame him for making all those unrealistic promises of freebies without understanding that the city had finites amount of cash.
"I will be blunt. New York City is facing a serious fiscal crisis," Mamdani told New Yorkers.
🚨 JUST IN: New Yorkers are in a state of SHOCK after Ugandan Mayor Zohran Mamdani says NYC now faces a "fiscal crisis at a scale of the GREAT RECESSION"
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) January 28, 2026
His plan: "Raising taxes on wealthy New Yorkers and profitable companies."
Yikes. Best of luck, NYC.pic.twitter.com/CchzRUwnjo
He said New York is up against a $12 billion budget deficit, and as you might expect, he blamed the previous administration. Sure, but can you lay all of that on former mayor Eric Adams?
Thanks to the Biden administration and New York’s own sanctuary city policies, the Big Apple was a major destination for the flood of illegal aliens over the past few years. The city picked up the tab for housing, food, shelter operations, health care, and related services for illegals to the tune of $8-$9 billion from 2023 through 2025.
Those are direct costs. Not included in that number are costs tied to policing, the courts, sanitation, schools, social services, public works, and other city functions, which have to accommodate an unspecified number of illegals.
Adams, a Democrat, complained publicly about the Biden open border policy and what it was costing New York, and asked that Washington do something about it. Not long after that, he was indicted in federal court in September 2024 on multiple criminal charges tied to alleged corruption linked to his 2021 mayoral campaign and benefits he received over many years. According to the federal indictment filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, the charges included bribery, conspiracy, wire fraud, and soliciting illegal campaign contributions — including from foreign nationals — and stemmed in part from alleged improper luxury travel and other benefits.
Funny how that works. I don’t seem to recall anyone in the legacy media ever calling Biden a fascist.
Still, Mamdani didn’t take aim at his national party leaders, but rather he blamed Adams and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for underbudgeting essential services and contributing to the deficit he inherited.
Not having any money will make it difficult for Mamdani to keep all those promises he made in 2025, which included:
- Freezing rent increases for millions of New Yorkers living in regulated units.
- Launching a chain of city-owned grocery stores.
- Rapidly increasing “affordable” housing construction for renters and low-income families.
- Free childcare for children from infancy through pre-K.
Margaret Thatcher, the legendary prime minister of the United Kingdom in the Reagan era, often said of socialism, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
Mamdani is finding that out right about now.
"We are speaking about a fiscal crisis at this scale greater than the great recession. And so there will not be one single thing that can answer that crisis," Mamdani stated.
To try to bail himself out of this mess, Mamdani said his administration will now scrutinize all city departments’ spending, but he acknowledged that will not be enough. He’s going to raise city taxes.
While you know in the end that working-class New York will bear the brunt of the tax hikes, Mamdani couldn’t bring himself to be honest on that score. So he selectively omitted them when he said, "That also means raising taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers and those profitable corporations, and it means recalibrating the relationship with the state."
Recalibrating the relationship with the state? I’m sorry, I don’t speak communist. Is he saying he’s going to try to force New York state taxpayers to clean up his mess?
Throughout his campaign, Mamdani said he wanted to raise taxes by 2% on millionaires and raise the corporate tax rate to over 22%. He said that again on Wednesday.
In spite of all this, he downplayed the impact this might have on businesses, possibly forcing out many major, taxpaying corporations with taxpaying employees. He said he’s not worried about that. But it’s too late. Our own Robert Spencer wrote in detail on the topic:
Businesses are fleeing New York City, and really, who can blame them? For years now, the left has had complete political hegemony in Gotham, and has instituted a maze of confiscatory tax policies that have made the cost of doing business in the city prohibitive, and the forest of accompanying regulations virtually impossible to navigate. The situation was bad enough during the mayoral tenures of Michael Bloomberg, Bill de Blasio, and Eric Adams. Now that the socialist wunderkind Zohran Mamdani is mayor, however, the flight is likely to accelerate exponentially.
Mamdani, who’s never really had a job before he got into state government and politics not too long ago, has his own ideas on how to turn the city around.
He wants to keep costs down, mostly for people who aren’t working – his base of new arrivals to America who are heavily reliant on entitlement programs. But making life more affordable for them has no impact on real economic growth. Economically, this is like treading water and calling yourself a competitive swimmer.
Lefty New York Gov. Kathy Hochul sent a clear message to Mamdani that the state’s not going to play Zohran ball.
"I have said, and the news flash may be to you if you haven't heard me, we are not raising taxes in the state of New York, we are not raising taxes for the sake of raising taxes, so he will continue to say what he needs to say," Hochul said.
While raising taxes and putting his hand in the Albany cookie jar are in his plan, making real cuts in spending are not.
"Right now, we are not entertaining the idea of cuts,” Mamdani said. “What we are talking about are savings and efficiencies that can be made but not getting into the place where New Yorkers have to question whether essential quality services will be delivered to come back."
That's like someone saying, "I'm an alcoholic, and I don't want to be an alcoholic, but I will not entertain the idea of quitting drinking."
In addition to the impact of costs tied to sanctuary city policies and illegal migration, the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns set New York City back quite a bit, and the balance sheets are still recovering from that.
In a political sense, New York City has become “Mamdani Island,” where Adams, Cuomo, Hochul, and a lot of others aren’t going to lift a finger to come to Mamdani’s rescue. He will have to figure it out on his own. Since you know he won’t, count on him to spend freely on his pet projects, and then do what Democrats do every time – raise taxes until it hurts. It’s hard to feel bad for New Yorkers. They voted for this.
