Who’s to blame for the current fiscal crisis across the country, specifically, in some of our nation’s biggest cities? And who should be on the hook to fix it? Griff Jenkins began a segment on Saturday afternoon’s Fox News Live program, discussing the tumult sweeping across New York City, as the metropolis devolves into crime-ridden financial chaos.
“Here is the New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ story. He’s announcing steep budget cuts on Thursday and blaming the city’s financial problems on the influx of migrants,” Jenkins began.
“We’re in some serious financial trouble right now,” Democrat Eric Adams said in his announcement last week. “And we just had to announce a budget cut in our services in the city. A total of twelve billion dollars to pay for the asylum seekers, migrant crisis that our city was hit with.”
Emma Fitzsimmons summarized the situation in her Thursday New York Times article. Explaining the crisis, she wrote, “Progressive Democrats immediately criticized the mayor’s cuts and said they would hurt working-class families. Lincoln Restler, a chair of the City Council’s progressive caucus, said his group would not cooperate with the cuts.
“Mayor Adams’s unnecessary, dangerous, and draconian budget cuts will only worsen New York’s affordability crisis and delay our city’s economic recovery by cutting funding for the schools, child care, food assistance and more that help New Yorkers live and raise families in this city,” Mr. Restler said.
Saturday on Fox News, one Republican didn’t hold back when assigning the blame, and also the steps necessary to rectify the situation.
“This is defunding the police without actually saying defund the police,” said Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY). “That is what New York City Democrats are doing. They’re taking away from tax-paying, law-abiding citizens services that they deserve and they’ve paid for. And they’re shifting it to individuals who have flowed into our country, not following the proper rules and protocol.”
And while many look at liberal, open-border policies as the ultimate cause on the national level, Malliotakis says local Democratic leaders should also be held accountable.
“The mayor has a lot of fault here as well. Because he actually misinterpreted the right-to-shelter law and insisted that it was meant for citizens of other countries, when it was solely meant for homeless New Yorkers. This is an argument we’ve been making over and over again,” Malliotakis pointed out. “The mayor by no means had to do what he did, which was put all of these individuals in luxury hotels, offer them free attorneys, offer them free education and services. He should have been focusing on the actual citizens who paid those taxes here in New York.”
The Republican from New York’s 11th congressional district laid out simple, common-sense steps that would begin securing and healing the city.
“The second thing is, he should be calling on the president to repeal his executive orders that created this crisis to begin with. We can easily go back to the policies of the previous administration,” she said. “And he can also call on Chuck Schumer, who is the senator from his city. Happens to be the head of the Senate. Allow our bill, our border security bill, H.R. 2, to come for a vote. I’m sure if it did, it would pass the senate and we could resolve this today.”
Viewers then saw a graphic showing, “NYC BUDGET CUTS DUE TO MIGRANT INFLUX,” including “freeze on hiring police, cut education department budget by $1 billion, close libraries on Sundays.”
“It seems to be a lot of things that are really going to hurt New Yorkers,” co-host Anita Vogel said.
“This is unfair to asylum seekers and migrants,” Mayor Adams continued in another clip. “And it’s unfair to New Yorkers who have been here for years upon years. The national government must do their share. This is a national problem.”
“So he’s sort of shifting the blame to the national government,” Vogel followed up. “But I thought it was interesting and I want to get your take on this, that he mentioned that it was unfair to migrants first. Before he mentioned that it was unfair to New Yorkers that have lived there for a long time. Your take on that.”
“Once again the mayor has misguided priorities here,” Malliotakis continued. “We are a city of immigrants. We welcome immigrants. But let me tell you something. The immigrants in this city are the ones that I think are the most pissed off. Because quite frankly, they followed the rules, they sacrificed, they worked really hard and now they’re being told that they need to pay billions of dollars in services for people who broke the rules.”
Malliotakis was clear about who specifically should not be forced to pay for today’s emerging overflow.
“My parents were immigrants. They came to this country, they never asked for a dollar from the government. No one ever paid for their housing or their services. So to tell the citizens of New York that they need to spend billions. Not just spend the billions, but on top of it they’re not going to have school safety officers in their school. They’re not going to have police officers patrolling their neighborhoods at a time when crime is still much higher than it was years ago.
“And we are 6,000 officers less than we had on September 11th. Not to mention the dangers of this open border. The fentanyl that is killing New Yorkers. Killing our young people. You saw the one-year-old boy in the Bronx, and so many others, that are being killed by the drug cartels that are peddling and trafficking this drug on the streets. So the mayor should be putting New Yorkers first.”
The New York Republican concluded by demanding that New York Democrats act quickly to reverse the fiscal and humanitarian turmoil their policies have caused.
“And that means telling your Senator Chuck Schumer, telling your leader Hakeem Jeffries, both from Brooklyn, both from New York City, to work with us to actually secure this border. We can get it done today if we just had cooperation from the Democrats in Washington. Instead, he’s asking for Washington to write a big check,” Malliotakis noted. “He just wants money to continue to open up more shelters and more encampments. You don’t hear him actually say stop the unsustainable flow that is unsafe and unsustainable for my city. He’s asking for more money to allow this to continue.”
“Well, it does seem like the absolute worst time to cut the number of police officers in New York City,” Vogel concluded. “With all that is going on that you just mentioned, it seems like a time to be adding police officers.”
Rick Schultz is a former Sports Director for WFUV Radio at Fordham University. He has coached and mentored hundreds of Sports Broadcasting students at the Connecticut School of Broadcasting, Marist College and privately. His media career experiences include working for the Hudson Valley Renegades, Army Sports at West Point, The Norwich Navigators, 1340/1390 ESPN Radio in Poughkeepsie, NY, Time Warner Cable TV, Scorephone NY, Metro Networks, NBC Sports, ABC Sports, Cumulus Media, Pamal Broadcasting and WATR. He has also authored a number of books including “A Renegade Championship Summer” and “Untold Tales From The Bush Leagues”. To get in touch, find him on Twitter @RickSchultzNY.
