IT BEGINS: Zohran Mamdani Announces Plans to ‘Tax the Wealthy’ to Compensate for NYC Budget Deficit (VIDEO)

New York Mayor Mamdani says city must hike taxes on wealthy to fill $12 billion deficit

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Wednesday said the city’s wealthiest must pay more in taxes to help fill the staggering budget deficit of more than $12 billion that he was left by his predecessor.

“This is at a scale that’s actually greater than what we saw here in New York City during the Great Recession,” Mamdani said of that budget hole during an interview with CNBC “Squawk Box” co-anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin at City Hall.

The Democrat, who took office on Jan. 1 after campaigning on a platform of hiking taxes on the rich, attributed the big deficit to “gross fiscal mismanagement.”

He pointed to actions taken by former Mayor Eric Adams, and by ex-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whom he soundly defeated in the November general election, for causing that budget gap.

Mamdani vowed that his administration will be up front with New Yorkers about budget issues that have been “hidden from them for far too long.”

City Comptroller Mark Levine earlier this month said the new mayor faces a budget shortfall that is projected to total $12.6 billion over the next two fiscal years.

That comprises a $2.2 billion projected deficit on the city’s nearly $116 billion budget for fiscal 2026, which ends on June 30, and a $10.4 billion gap in fiscal 2027.