New York’s welfare rolls have skyrocketed — and the trend’s sure to grow worse under Mayor Zohran Mamdani, because the issue isn’t poverty levels but political will.

Some 865,000 residents collected cash assistance this past year, sending the city’s welfare spending to a record $2.7 billion. 

That’s up from a low of 336,000 soon after Mayor Mike Bloomberg left office; welfare soon started edging up under Mayor Bill de Blasio  — then began to explode under “reforms” he adopted in the name of handling COVID, plus the loosening of rules under President Joe Biden and the big-spending Democratic Congress.

Mayor Eric Adams didn’t try to reverse the trend, so Mamdani inherited the crisis — but what Democratic Socialist would consider this a crisis?

Nearly all of us think the government should make some decent provision for the truly needy, but the left always takes it much farther — until the public has had enough.

Mayor Rudy Giuliani took over in 1994 with more than 1 million New Yorkers on welfare; he turned it around with fingerprinting and other anti-fraud measures and by requiring able-bodied recipients to seek work (and helping them find it).

That inspired the Republican Congress elected late that year to push President Bill Clinton to sign the landmark 1996 welfare national reform, which helped the city get the rolls down by 70% before Bloomberg left.

A reduction, please note, that did not at all produce the mass suffering that the critics of the reforms predicted.

Bottom line: New York already proved it can prune the undeserving off the welfare rolls — the only thing missing is a leader willing to do it again.