Fifty years ago this month, a president of the United States famously told New York City to “drop dead” (as one tabloid put it) in rebuffing City Hall’s request for an emergency loan to prevent the Big Apple from falling into bankruptcy.
Gerald Ford made that denial because he believed the city shouldn’t be rewarded for poor fiscal management, and that potential economic failure would serve as a lesson New York would never forget. However, within weeks of his decision, Ford reversed course and agreed to provide federal loans to keep the city afloat, with conditions that mandated better fiscal management.
The change also came because Ford was heading into an election year, and there was a tremendous amount of political pressure on him to keep the nation’s largest city solvent. New York is the economic capital of the world; if the city lacks the capital to fund its police, fire, mass transit, hospitals, schools and other critical operations, physical ruin would soon follow, followed by economic collapse on a much larger scale than the city itself.
Ford made that realization and, in the end, did the right thing for both New York City and America. The question before us now is whether the current president will remember that lesson.
Donald Trump has repeatedly tried to defund New York City this year — its transit system, its schools, its police force, and more — to advance his agenda. He is rattling the economic saber with the mayor’s race coming up, threatening to make further cuts to New York if they elect one candidate over another.
In a democracy, the people have the final say. New Yorkers will make up their minds on Election Day and live with the consequences of that choice, just as they have done every four years for more than a century. This city, however, should not be under constant threat of economic or political retribution because of the choices the voters make at the ballot box.
What must be understood, however, is that though many things have changed over the last 50 years, one constant remains: New York is the economic capital of world.
Our city, with an 8 million population, faces numerous challenges. Those challenges, however, will multiply exponentially if a president makes misguided decisions to defund our police, our transit system, our schools, and other parts of our government.
If New York’s economy and real estate market plummet as a result of such defunding, so too will Wall Street. If Wall Street tanks, the American economy will follow suit. The pain will be equally felt in every state, regardless of who they voted for in the last election.
Any president who tells our city to “drop dead” is essentially telling the American economy to do the same.
