A looming budget fight in New York is intensifying as Mayor Zohran Mamdani pushes an aggressive plan to hike taxes on wealthy residents and major corporations, setting up a direct clash with Gov. Kathy Hochul.
According to Fox News, the announcement received sharp criticism from Wall Street Journal editor-at-large Gerry Baker, who warned that the mayor’s proposal would be “catastrophic,” arguing it reflects a broader ideological shift.
“This is socialism in action, this is the Democratic Party in action, and the rest of the country’s watching,” he said Wednesday on “America Reports.”
Mamdani has made raising taxes on high earners a central pillar of his fiscal agenda, saying the goal is to shield working- and middle-class New Yorkers from the burden of closing budget gaps.
“What we are hoping for, what we will spend every day looking towards, is working with Albany to increase taxes on the wealthiest and the most profitable corporations such that a fiscal crisis is not resolved on the backs of working and middle-class New Yorkers,” the mayor said.
But the plan cannot move forward without state approval, placing Hochul in a pivotal position.
“He doesn’t have the option to raise income taxes without approval from the governor,” Baker said. “So, he’s going to try and do it in other ways, raising property taxes.”
Mamdani has threatened to do exactly that, issuing an ultimatum that he will increase property taxes by nearly 10% if Hochul does not sign off on the income tax hike.
The standoff comes as the mayor unveiled a proposed 2027 city budget that Baker noted is larger than Pennsylvania’s entire state budget, despite New York City having a smaller population.
New York City’s $127 billion budget serves roughly 8.4 million residents, compared to Pennsylvania’s $53.2 billion budget for 13 million people.
“They will say, ‘New York City is more, it’s expensive. Everything costs more here; labor is significantly more, wages are higher. So, it’s understandable that New York costs will be a little bit higher.’ But there’s no justification for that,” Baker said.
He also disputed the mayor’s claim that the tax increases would target only the wealthy.
“The plan he has will hit, not just the rich as they keep claiming, but huge numbers of middle-class taxpayers,” Baker said.
Baker predicted higher taxes would accelerate an ongoing population decline.
“The idea that that’s going to be good for the city, that it’s going be good to tax people even more than they are already, is madness,” he said. “It means more people will leave the city than already have. There’s been a steady outflow over many years.”
The debate now centers on whether Hochul will block the proposal or align with the mayor’s push.
“We’re gonna see on whether Kathy Hochul, who wants her own kind of form of sort of limited socialism… whether her limited form is able to trump Zohran Mamdani’s extremism,” Baker said.
