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Mamdani set to tax the rich until they scream as NYC looks to plug mammoth budget hole

January 29, 2026 | | Print Article

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is calling for a tax hike on the wealthy and corporations as Gotham faces a mammoth budget deficit of more than $12 billion now that he has settled into City Hall.

“We are speaking about a fiscal crisis at a scale greater than the Great Recession,” Hizzoner said at a Wednesday press conference. “And so there will not be one single thing that can answer that crisis. It will require us to pursue every single avenue.”

“That means looking inward into savings and efficiencies,” he continued. “That also means raising taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers and the most profitable corporations, and it means recalibrating the relationship with the state.”

“This is the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, and yet we have allowed one in four New Yorkers to live in poverty. It doesn’t need to be that way,” Mamdani added.

“The time has come to tax the richest New Yorkers and most profitable corporations,” the Ugandan-born Democrat also declared at a Wednesday town hall, wasting little time in waging the class warfare that has always been the first, last, and only resort of socialists wherever voters have been gullible enough to vote them into power.

Mamdani laid the blame for the dire financial situation squarely at the feet of his predecessor, former Mayor Eric Adams.

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“This crisis has a name and a chief architect. In the words of the Jackson 5, it’s as easy as ABC. This is the Adams budget crisis,” he said. “He systematically under-budgeted services that New Yorkers rely on every single day.”

Adams clapped back at his successor in a Wednesday post to X.

“Mayor Mamdani promised a laundry list of ‘free’ giveaways to buy votes, with no plan to pay for them. Now that the math doesn’t work, instead of owning the fact that he misled New Yorkers, he’s blaming me,” the former mayor wrote. “Let’s be clear: I left him over $8 BILLION in reserves.”

“This is the same Mamdani who spent years attacking me for not spending enough during the migrant crisis,” Adams added. “The only reason those reserves exist is because I ignored him and his socialist comrades who demanded we blow billions more with no guardrails.”

Mamdani has wasted little time making an impression and drew both raves and brickbats over his sporty custom Carhartt jacket he showed off during a Sunday press conference on the winter storm that hit the Big Apple over the weekend.

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The black “Full Swing Steel” jacket was customized for the former assemblyman by Chelsea workwear shop Dave’s New York and displayed a “The City of New York” logo in script on the chest with an embroidered “Mayor” on the sleeve.

Mamdani’s fans and fashion outlets gushed over the mayor’s new clothes, but others weren’t impressed.

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Mamdani’s call to tax the rich puts pressure on New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who is running for reelection and has pledged not to raise taxes.

“If the state does not balance our fiscal relationship and raise taxes on the wealthiest amongst us, the only tools that leaves the city are the most painful ones,” Mamdani spokesperson Dora Pekec said in a statement. “City Hall is looking to do everything we can so that we don’t end up in a place where those must be used.”

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New Yorkers, including the rich, knew exactly what they were getting when they allowed a “communist lunatic” to become mayor of their city; now they are finding out that elections have consequences.

Chris Donaldson
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