00:0021 weeks ago, I spoke directly to New Yorkers about the scale of the massive budget crisis
00:04that we had inherited. It was January. Snow lay on the ground. Our city was reckoning with a
00:10$12 billion deficit, a fiscal crisis larger than any since the Great Recession. For too long,
00:17New York City had relied on budgeting tricks instead of budgeting honestly.
00:21Costs were hidden. Fiscal cliffs were ignored. Difficult decisions were deferred for someone
00:26else to make. We chose a different path. Fourteen weeks later, after long nights and painstaking
00:33work, we presented an executive budget that brought that $12 billion gap down to zero.
00:38We balanced the budget without asking working New Yorkers to shoulder the burden once again.
00:42We balanced the budget without slashing the services that New Yorkers rely on,
00:46the cultural institutions and public transportation that connect people to the city and to one another.
00:52And we balanced the budget by governing with a fiscal responsibility that has been absent for far
00:57too long from City Hall. We scoured for savings. We found efficiencies in streamlined city government.
01:03We refused to repeat the mistakes that created the crisis in the first place. We budgeted honestly.
01:09We accounted for the real costs facing our city. And we began building a government that plans for
01:15tomorrow instead of pretending that it will never come. We worked closely with Governor Hochul and our
01:20partners in both Albany and here at the city council. And we raised taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers
01:25instead of taking more from those with the least. Throughout this process, I've been reminded of
01:30the words of the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek. If socialists understood economics, they wouldn't
01:35be socialists. If these past months have shown us anything, it is that socialists not only understand
01:40economics just as well as the capitalists who came before, but that we can solve their years of
01:44mismanagement through an embrace of our principles. There is nothing fiscally responsible about
01:50balancing the budget on the backs of working people. Today, six weeks after presenting our
01:54executive budget, I am proud to stand alongside Speaker Menon and the city council to announce that we have
02:00successfully negotiated an agreement on a final adopted budget.
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