While New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has been in the national limelight for many months, his democratic socialist colleague in Seattle, Mayor Katie Wilson, has mostly remained under the radar.
A few weeks ago, Mamdani released his Fiscal Year 2027 Preliminary Budget, which calls for $14 billion in new spending, even though New York City faces a $12 billion deficit over the next two years.
Deservedly, Mamdani was lambasted for wanting to raise spending, raid the city’s “rainy day fund,” and worst of all, hike property taxes.
Around the same time, Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson delivered her State of the City Address, in which she implored the “city council to fund shelter expansion,” “expand childcare and early education as public goods,” “expand access to affordable food,” increase rent subsidies, etc.
“I am determined to add 1,000 new units this year, with services matched to people’s needs, and we are on our way to reach this goal,” Wilson proclaimed.
Although Wilson has not yet released a formal budget proposal, it seems more than reasonable that she wants to vastly increase spending on several socialist programs and projects.
However, like New York City, Seattle simply cannot afford socialism.
For the past several years, the Seattle City Council has passed “balanced” budgets, as it must do under the law. But in reality, the city’s budget is far from balanced.
In late 2024, the Seattle City Council announced that it has “successfully” closed “a $250-plus million dollar budget shortfall while making all-time-high investments in affordable housing and other critical services.”
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“In one of the toughest budget years in recent memory, we have come together, made smart decisions, and protected the services our city depends on while making strides toward greater financial sustainability,” Councilmember Dan Strauss, chair of the select budget committee, triumphantly stated.
For the record, the 2025-26 budget included “Seattle’s largest-ever investment in affordable housing – more than $340 million – five times as much as the City was spending before the pandemic,” “Record-high investments in public safety programs, including expanding Community Assisted Response and Engagement (CARE) citywide and seven days a week,” “Funding the creation of new non-congregate shelters and $4 million to help YouthCare create a workforce training and affordable housing project for homeless youth,” “New funding to help address substance use disorder,” and “$7.1 million in additional rental assistance to help people stay housed.”
Guess what? That $250 million shortfall did not remain closed for long. Next year, a budget deficit of at least $127 million already looms.
Make no mistake, Seattle spends a lot of money. This year, it will allocate $8.9 billion in total. For context, Seattle’s population is approximately 800,000.
In 2018, Seattle’s population was about 743,000 residents. That year, the city budget totaled $4.6 billion.
One need not be a mathematician to comprehend that Seattle’s budget has nearly doubled since 2018, whereas its total population has increased by less than 60,000 people.
So, what is a Seattle socialist to do?
Well, Wilson is in a conundrum. On one hand, she wants to increase spending because she is a Democratic Socialist. On the other hand, she must balance the budget.
Unsurprisingly, Wilson wants to tax the rich. On February 14, she made a speech describing the city as “filthy rich,” suggesting “progressive taxes on high earners are sustainable and lucrative,” which the Washington Policy Center notes, “downplays migration risks, and ignores the delayed nature of behavioral responses to taxation.”
While it is true that Seattle’s millionaire’s tax, which went into effect in 2025, has led to more revenue for the city, it is also a short-sighted “solution” that will likely bear less fruit as time goes on.
“The tax’s first-year over performance reflects wealth already here…Migration often lags policy by years, as seen in California and New York, where high earners quietly decamp after thresholds are crossed,” the Washington Policy Center writes.
In other words, revenue grabs like Seattle’s 5 percent levy on those earning more than $1 million may result in a one-time windfall, but they are neither sustainable nor lucrative over the long term.
The best viable solution for a city drowning in debt, like Seattle, is to curb spending while creating tax and regulatory environments that are conducive to innovation and wealth creation.
For a socialist like Wilson, that is a tough pill to swallow.
As Margaret Thatcher so brilliantly put it, “the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” To be clear, socialism in Seattle is doomed to fail because Thatcher’s axiom even applies to millionaires in The Emerald City.
Chris Talgo (ctalgo@heartland.org) is editorial director at The Heartland Institute.
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