New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ (D) call for budget cuts to contend with the illegal alien crisis may be little more than a political stunt according to one analysis.
At every turn, Hizzoner has seen fit to point the finger anywhere but at City Hall in finding blame for the Big Apple’s big alien problem. But after labeling Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) a “madman” and begging New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) and President Joe Biden to bail him out, demands for across-the-board budget cuts may just be the latest attempt for Adams to have his sanctuary city cake and eat it too.
Writing for the New York Post, contributing editor for the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal Nicole Gelinas slammed the mayor’s call for 5% cuts as “unserious political theater.”
“If you need more evidence Mayor Eric Adams has no idea how to manage the migrant crisis, look to his apocalyptic warning about city budget cuts,” she began before asserting, “The mayor’s intent is to terrify President Joe Biden into giving us billions of dollars.”
With more than 100,000 illegal aliens accounted for overcrowding makeshift city shelters, the mayor has oft-repeated projections of $12 billion in costs to the city through 2025.
Citing the previously reported demand that agencies reduce their budgets by November, Gelinas pointed out that pensions, debt costs and city worker benefits amounting to more than $30 billion of a roughly $111 billion budget and “that stuff is untouchable, absent long-term reforms, the real cut to services Adams proposes — fire, police, sanitation, education — will be 8%.”
This, she compared to a spending cut done by then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg after the 2008 financial crisis of a mere 3% under the constraints of low inflation. “An 8% slash would be something we didn’t even see in the mid-1970s fiscal crisis. And the mayor would follow this cut with similar cuts over three more years.”
Adams had contended, “The simple truth is that longtime New Yorkers and asylum seekers will feel these potential cuts and they will hurt,” and added, “New Yorkers are angry and frustrated, and they are right to be. I am too.”
NYC agencies may soon feel crunch as Mayor Adams calls for 5% budget cuts due to illegal alien crisis https://t.co/I4g2CbxAHS pic.twitter.com/e9vla5p8Vg
— BPR (@BIZPACReview) September 13, 2023
However, Gelinas cried foul on the entire exercise noting that nothing has changed in the weeks since the budget process began or since Hochul met with the state’s financial control board to affirm, as required by state law, that the budget was balanced.
“Adams knew in June that offering shelter to tens of thousands of migrants was costing billions. If this spending was going to devour city services — as it obviously was — Adams should have leveled with the City Council during the June budget process, outlining which services he plans to cut,” she wrote.
Still, as recently as Friday, Adams pushed for the president to issue an emergency declaration in New York while coordinating his latest plan for shelters by entering into a lease agreement with the federal government to use Floyd Bennett Field as the latest site to house aliens.
…we’ve been forced to unsustainably open new site after new site as asylum seekers continue to arrive by the thousands. This is not an adequate solution or any sort of long-term plan by the federal government to this national problem.
— Mayor Eric Adams (@NYCMayor) September 15, 2023
Furthermore, she pointed to conflicting statements from the mayor based on his audience. “So on one hand, the city is saying nobody — neither city workers nor residents — is going to notice these budget cuts. On the other hand, the mayor is telling Queens residents….that ‘this could destroy our city.'”
“Adams’ only strategy is theater: He wants Biden to quake at the idea of massive cutbacks to New York City police, fire and sanitation services during the presidential election and hand over cash to avoid these cuts,” contended Gelinas.
“But the president doesn’t care,” she asserted. “The only people stuck in this theater are city residents, and the only person who thinks screaming ‘Fire!’ in the theater is going to prevent the fire is Adams.”
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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