What They Said
These are some of the famous quotes from the 1970s fiscal crisis.
New York runs on money. What’s right with the city and what’s wrong with the it depends on how the mayor uses your money. And only a mayor who knows money can do the job.
-Mayor Abraham Beame speaking as a candidate.
There’s going to be a $10 billion budget sitting on the next mayor’s desk, and he’d better know what to do with it-fast. Believe me, I won’t have to wait five seconds to know what to do with it.
- Mayor Abraham Beame speaking as a candidate.
I’ve only been in municipal government a short time, but I have my own uncomfortable sense of how this obfuscation has arisen, and I don’t think it was all accidental.
- Controller of New York Harrison Jay Goldin
Frankly, you’ve got to balance your own budget before you get a great deal of sympathy or help from other levels of government.
- Vice President Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller
The banks and us are in a community of interests. If we go down, they go down.
- First Deputy Mayor of New York City James A. Cavanagh
We’re not talking budget gap here or stuff like that. We’re talking cash flow. We need cash and we need it in thirty days.
-Budget Director of New York City Melvin Lechner
They sit talking about how great the salami sandwiches are. For Heaven’s sake, the iceberg is up ahead and they better get this Titanic turned around.
- Borough President of Staten Island Robert T. Connor
The dikes are crumbling and we’re running out of fingers.”
- Member of New York State Fiscal Advisory Panel and Chairman of MAC Felix Rohatyn
The city of New York is on the brink of financial collapse; an unparalleled disaster looms over it.
- Governor Hugh Carey
I think things are unresolved still. But the workers should know that no matter how the confusion affects them, they should know we’re coming to a climax.
- President of New York City Council Paul O’ Dwyer
The investing public apparently lacks confidence in the city’s management and its ability to regain its solvency. There is a pervasive perception that city efforts at fiscal and management reform are not credible.
- Member of Emergency Financial Control Board William Elinghaus
Would the French disown Paris? Or the British allow London to become insolvent? Would the Soviets abandon Moscow?
- Mayor Abraham Beame
You don’t give her hundred dollars to support her habit.
-President Gerald Ford’s spokesman comparing New York City to a wayward daughter hooked on heroine and thus justifying Ford’s refusal to provide federal aid
I came to this country in 1942, past a statue in New York Harbor bearing the inscription starting with “Give me your tired and your poor.” I would submit to you that, had the words “cold turkey” been substituted on that statute this country would be a lesser place.
- Member of New York State Fiscal Advisory Panel and Chairman of MAC Felix Rohatyn
The city will get into balance because it has to. Period.
- Member of New York State Fiscal Advisory Panel and Chairman of MAC Felix Rohatyn
And those moneys, those dollars, would come from the hard-earned taxes of the people in Toledo and Kansas and Grand Rapids and California. They would pay for the meals in our prisons and hospitals and welfare checks for our needy.
– Governor Hugh Carey
Default is a copout; it is a defeat; it is dismal denial of hope to our Nation’s cities.
- Governor Hugh Carey
I do not think it is a healthy thing for the federal government to bail out a city. And I mean a city that has handled its fiscal affairs as irresponibly over a long period of time as New York.
- President Gerald Ford
I have decided to ask the Congress… to provide a temporary line of credit to the State of New York to enable it to provide seasonal financing of essential services for the people of New York City.
- President Gerald Ford
This city isn’t the one I grew up in, not anymore it isn’t.
- Councilman Matthew Troy Jr.
There it is, ladies and gentlemen: the Bronx is burning.
- Howard Cossell
I restored the pride of New Yorkers.
- Ed Koch