New York’s desperate governor is turning to a well-known practice in New York City: aggressive begging.
While speaking at Politico’s “New York Agenda: Albany Summit” last week, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, admitted that the state’s tax base has eroded and that it faces a deepening fiscal crisis.
She then put out a call for wealthy, former New Yorkers to come back to the state so they can be robbed again by beneficent government overlords.
“I need people who are high net worth to support the generous social programs we want to have in our state,” Hochul said. “There are some patriotic millionaires who stepped up. Ok. Cut me the checks. But if you want to be supportive, maybe the first step should be to go down to Palm Beach and see who you can bring back home.”
This is unbelievably, well, rich of her to say.
As more than a few folks on X recalled, Hochul was insistent in 2022 that anyone who disagreed with the leftward direction of the state should just “jump on a bus and head down to Florida.”
Whelp, I guess a lot of them did and now she’s pleading with them to come back so they can be milked like cows and bilked like suckers. What a great message.
Keep in mind that the New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the New York legislature have proposed a bevy of new “wealth” taxes to make up for their growing budget shortfalls.
I think Hochul knows that Mamdani’s socialist schemes and ridiculous fiscal requests are a recipe for disaster. But she can’t or won’t do anything about it. The young leftist is far too popular with the Democrat Party base; his New York City experiment is seen as critical to the Left’s success elsewhere.
So Hochul and her allies in Albany have no choice but to mitigate, to squeeze what they can from the rest of the state and pathetically beg former New Yorkers to come back from Florida’s greener pastures.
And if it isn’t obvious already, well-run states like Florida have created quite an embarrassment for Hochul and the most petulant defenders of the blue state model.
There is a reason why California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is totally not running for president, keeps concocting bizarre narratives about how Texas and Florida are high tax states compared to California.
Yes, he really thinks people are dumb enough to believe that.
The comparison between Florida and New York is certainly an instructive one. The two states have roughly the same population. New York has an estimated population of just under 20 million. Florida’s population is around 23 million. Yet, Florida spent about $115 billion last year and New York spent $235 billion. New York City’s budget alone was nearly the same as Florida’s despite having less than half the population.
And remarkably, that budget still isn’t enough for New York politicians. Mamdani intends to spend enough to insult even the most profligate drunken sailors. He already plans to raid the city’s rainy-day fund, ensuring that nothing will be there in a real crisis. No surprise, Moody’s financial rating service has already issued a warning to the city by giving it a negative credit outlook.
Meanwhile, Mamdani’s working hard to ensure that legitimate public services are overrun by vagrants, and services for vagrants are overrun by NGO leeches.
Some are calling for the “grownups” to step in and convince Mamdani and his minions to see reason. Unfortunately, Hochul is the adult in this scenario and she’s not going to do anything to put serious pressure on the Left’s favorite mayor.
It’s bleak, and she knows it.
On the other hand, with a much lower budget, Florida mostly delivers on its more limited governmental promises. From K-12 schools to even public transit, Florida has been going in a positive direction for years. Americans—and not just the “rich”—have been moving en masse to the Sunshine state because it has lower taxes, lower cost of living, a better job market, and isn’t foisting transgenderism on children along with a litany of other woke garbage.
So why would someone who has decided to make the swap decide to go back unless they absolutely must?
They won’t. And New York’s leaders are unlikely to address what’s going wrong. Their only hope might be for a federal government to step in and save them after they’ve made it their proud mission to stop the operations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
If they think President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are going to bail them out I have a bridge to sell them in Brooklyn.
