President backs Cuomo in election eve Truth Social post as Mamdani hits back at Trump’s ‘threat – it is not the law’
On the eve of New York’s well-watched mayoral election, Donald Trump issued a threat to its voters: stop Zohran Mamdani or pay.
“If Communist Candidate Zohran Mamdani wins the Election for Mayor of New York City, it is highly unlikely that I will be contributing Federal Funds, other than the very minimum as required, to my beloved first home,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “I don’t want to send, as President, good money after bad.”
Trump’s comments echo those broadcast on Sunday during his appearance on CBS’s 60 minutes, in which he said: “It’s gonna be hard for me as the president to give a lot of money to New York, because if you have a communist running New York, all you’re doing is wasting the money you’re sending there.”
Other states should protest by withholding taxes, as well. United, yes?
Aside from it not really working that way, that’s what they want, they want states to start acting against the union. They are intentionally stressing the constitution and governmental system so they can then use that backlash as the justification to discard more of the constitution.
It’s a bully teasing and poking and pulling your hair and being annoying until you finally swing at them, then they use that as the excuse to beat the shit out of you. It’s aggression and hate and malice being implemented as political strategy.
That’s not really how it works - there’s no one big sack of cash that gets handed over by the state, individual businesses (and people) pay their taxes to the IRS directly, and then separately to the state tax agencies (obvs leaving out some of the draconian nuance here). States don’t have a practical method of withholding taxes short of going to every business and demanding they stop paying the feds. While hypothetically possible at some point, it’s not in the short term feasible.
There is a big sack of cash that gets handed over by the state: the federal payroll taxes for all the state government employees.
In comparison to all federal taxes payed out by people within a state, that’s a pretty miniscule sack of cash. The government is among the largest employers in every state true, but their payroll contributions aren’t anything compared to the whole and they’re paltry compared to things like business-derived tax revenue. States could withhold them, yes, but it wouldn’t do much if they did.
I’m not comparing to the whole. I’m comparing to states sitting on their hands and doing nothing in the face of a rogue government in D.C. that’s pulling shit like withholding disaster relief to blue states.
Federal payroll taxes for California state government workers, just using the portion that the employer pays, total ~$22 billion a year. And let’s say there’s another ~$15 billion for New York. Now imagine every blue state withholds theirs. Seems like a good chunk of change.
It’s not nothing, but it’s really just not very much in context. Together those make up around the same amount trump is causally refusing to release from the SNAP emergency funds (~$33 billion) and that shortfall is being mitigated. Not trivially, it would be awesome to have that cash and people will feel it, but cutting those funds off for a full year would result in something like two weeks of reduced SNAP benefits or a couple days of federal furlough.
You’re thinking of this from the perspective of the federal government. But also think about it from the perspective of the states. For instance, the amount that California could withhold is equal to like 10% of their yearly budget. That could pay for so many of their government programs that actually benefit people in their state. And in so doing it would make them that much less dependent on the whims of the Trump regime.
Alright, the scope of this discussion is creeping pretty drastically. There’s still no one big sack of cash, and while yes california could save some money by not paying out their payroll taxes (btw where did you find the state payroll amount? I’ve been looking around and can’t find it reported anywhere) it’s still not very much money, especially as they would then be required to cover that portion of the budget that was once covered by the federal government ($600 Billion) who doubtlessly would stop funding California in response to blatant secession…
At this point there’s little reason for blue states to remain. The US federal government is too far gone to fix and the kinds of ass wipe Democrats who would get elected certainly are going to do anything like expanding the Supreme Court or her tailing the power of the president so we might as well start from scratch
Blexit
I may be wrong, but isn’t NYC more of a money generator than it’s a receiver? If that’s so, I don’t see how NYC would suffer, but it would widen the divide between such areas and poor dotational ones, making their people possible maga recruits.
Most blue areas produce money, most red areas (excluding Texas I think) are leeches.
T*xas very much does too, despite how much they like to act big and bad and independent.
I man they do generate a lot more money than most red states. Being able to admit that doesn’t detract anything from the overall point.
Yeah but we’re talking about net here. Most blue states are net producers, most red states are net leechers. Texas might not be as big of a leech as some others, but it’s still a leech.
Texas would be but they reject some federal funds they’d be entitled to.
it’s interesting to see how the lemmy users handle this communist lib vs trump being a friend of China and Russia alignment
Well first of all, Mamdani isn’t communist. He’s more in line with a democratic socialist.
Second, Russia isn’t communist, they’re fascist. China is very mich a capitalist country, which means they can not be communist. I don’t know exactly what they are, but they’re definately authoritarian, something Mamdani isn’t at all.
Yes. There are parts of Lemmy declaring the likes of Mamdani as libs and fascist nations as the true communists
Well sure, but just as I don’t take the political opinions of the drunk guy on the train seriously, I don’t consider theirs of value.
Of course. Not valuable, only interesting
