Desperate Hochul begs wealthy New Yorkers to come back — as Mamdani pressures her to hike their taxes
ALBANY — Gov. Kathy Hochul is begging wealthy New Yorkers who fled the city to encourage their rich pals to come back and continue padding the Empire State’s lavish public handouts.
Hochul made the case against caving to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s demands that she hike income taxes — by saying she not only wants fat cats to stay in the city, but also by clawing at those who have moved to states with better business climates like Florida.
“Maybe the first step should be to go down to Palm Beach and see who we can bring back home because our tax base has been eroded,” the Democratic governor said at a forum hosted by Politico last week.
“I have to look at the fact that we are in competition with other states who have less of a tax burden on their corporations and their individuals,” she said.
The comments are a far cry from Hochul’s much-derided remarks from her 2022 election campaign where she ripped her GOP opponent, Rep. Lee Zeldin, as well as then-Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro and President Trump, telling them and other New York Republicans to scram.
“Trump and Zeldin and Molinaro – just jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong. OK? Get out of town. Because you don’t represent our values,” Hochul said at the time.
Hochul, who faces re-election in November, has made the pitch defending high-earners to shore up the state’s tax base in recent weeks as Mamdani and his “tax the rich” crew of lefty lawmakers demand she further jack up income taxes.
The governor was particularly poking at the group “Patriotic Millionaires” in her remarks last week, after the tax-loving lefty group got behind Mamdani’s push for an additional 2% citywide income tax on those making more than a million dollars and other proposals to squeeze more money out of New Yorkers such as lower the estate tax threshold.
Hizzoner wants to use funds raised by the tax hike to help pay for his democratic socialist wishlist and cover the $5.4 billion budget gap he claims the city faces.
But even Hochul — who is negotiating her own massively bloated $263 billion budget proposal — admitted she’s been cashing in on New Yorkers’ income taxes to buoy state finances for years.
“We have to be smart about this, but we can fund what we want to fund with what we already are taking in,” bragged Hochul.
The state had been facing its own multibillion-dollar budget gap that was largely patched after a great year on Wall Street caused bonuses to shoot up 25% over 2025, according to Hochul’s budget office.
But despite shrieking that Trump is wrecking the economy whenever it’s convenient, Hochul was somehow able to find $1.5 billion in new cash to bail out the city and another $1.7 billion to expand childcare access in her record-high spending proposal.
Continuing to hold that line, she told reporters as recently as Wednesday that she thinks the handouts she has offered will suffice and that the city needs to reign in spending instead.
“I am focused 100% on affordability measures,” Hochul said, asked if she sees a potential compromise on taxes.
If her budget passes, Hochul will have racked up state spending almost $54 billion, or 20%, since she took office in 2021.
That amount of growth is more than the entire state budget for more than half of the 50 states.
“It’s awfully rich of her,” Molinaro told The Post.
“I’m glad she is acknowledging that the problems she has created have made New York so unaffordable so as to have to beg people to come back from Florida,” Molinaro, who is running for the state legislature after a stint in the Trump administration, added.
Miami (top) and New York
“Florida’s Realtor of the Year,” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) swiped on X.
“Good luck trying to get them back,” state Sen. Tom O’Mara (R-Chemung), who is the top Republican on the chamber’s finance panel, told The Post Wednesday.
“Sooner or later, as Margaret Thatcher says, we’re going to run out of other people’s money. And that’s what happens when the rich leave,” O’Mara said.
“That’s an indictment on the policy she’s had over all these years,” state Sen. Jim Tedisco (R-Schenectady) told The Post.
He said Democrats are furthering a vicious cycle of raising taxes to drive up spending and then repeat.
“This is the same poison medicine that got us to this affordability problem. And everybody on their side is trying to campaign on affordability, especially her,” Tedisco said.
1 comment:
Somehow I suspect the message "Please come back so we can fuck you up the ass" is not going to be a big winner.
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