Those Cheers for Mamdani’s Budget ‘Heroism’ Can’t Help When the Bills Come Due

By The New York Post Editorial Board

All hail Blessed Zohran, Protector of Children and Parks, Champion of the Poor and Budget Wizard Supreme: Progressive media have pulled out all the stops praising Mayor Mamdani’s miracle of (supposedly) plugging a $12 billion gap without hurting the poor.

Or, as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweet-cheered: “A triumphant accomplishment and a demonstration of what we can accomplish together,” also hailing Mamdani’s “visionary leadership” as he “never gave up on a city that works for all New Yorkers.”

Balderdash: For starters, it was never more than a $5.4 billion gap, and that was because of all the areas where he wanted to boost spending in his $124.7 billion plan.

He blamed Mayor Eric Adams for the shortfall, but wouldn’t reverse any outlays his predecessor had upped — except, of course, for the NYPD.

The city’s tax income rose markedly this last year, making the “greatest budget crisis since the Great Recession” as phony as Mamdani’s grin.

Lucky for him, Gov. Kathy Hochul needs his support for her re-election run; to get it, she handed him at least $4 billion worth of bailout: a new tax on pied-a-terre apartments and an OK to shortchange payments to city pension funds (four of the five, incidentally, are already underfunded now, even by generous government-accounting standards), as well as some money for child-care and (temporary) suspension of state-mandated (but otherwise needless) teacher hiring.

She won’t need him next year, when the city already faces a $7 billion gap.

Aside from a few tiny, vindictive cuts ($1 million from veterans services), he simply imagined a few line-item savings that likely won’t materialize — meaning the city will finish the year short, adding to that coming gap.

As the Manhattan Institute’s Nicole Gelinas snarked on X, it turns out “socialist spending just looks like good old-fashioned bad budgeting practice.”

Mamdani managed to avoid any real spending cuts this year, at the price of spending all his available political capital — and of putting himself in a far deeper hole for the rest of his term.

No doubt all his current cheerleaders will join him in blaming everyone and everything but his own foolishness when it’s time to pay the piper — but that won’t make the bills go away.

Those cheers for Mamdani’s budget ‘heroism’ can’t help when the bills come due https://t.co/uhRiRtG4Bl pic.twitter.com/T8uroSA07x

— NY Post Opinion (@NYPostOpinion) May 15, 2026