Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

As New York State’s pandemic was winding down, Governor Cuomo had a heartwarming message of thanks for the 21,000 volunteers who had traveled from around the country to help save lives.

Pay me. Now.

Men and women who had come to help, and had made the mistake of helping for more than two weeks, would now be liable for New York taxes, not just for the money that they earned in New York, but even back home. A paramedic from Wyoming whose employer gave him paid leave would have to pay New York taxes on his earnings to subsidize the corrupt administration of Cuomo and his Democrat cronies.

Even the families of men like Paul Cary, a Colorado firefighter paramedic who volunteered to come to New York to help save lives and died of the coronavirus, might be hit with a New York tax bill.

“We’re not in a position to provide any subsidies right now because we have a $13 billion deficit,” the governor weaseled at one of his innumerable non-essential press conferences.  “So there’s a lot of good things I’d like to do, and if we get federal funding, we can do, but it would be irresponsible for me to sit here looking at a $13 billion deficit and say I’m gonna spend more money.”

Or, as Goodfellas put it, much more simply and more honestly, “Business bad? F__ you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? F__ you, pay me. Place got hit by lightning, huh? F__ you, pay me.”

Pandemic? Come to New York to save lives? F__ you, pay Cuomo. Unless the Feds bail out New York.

Governor Cuomo was taking heroic volunteers from other states hostage to demand a federal bailout for one of the wealthiest states in the country. When the rest of the country refused to blink, the Democrat thug decided to escalate by taking cops and firefighters across his own state hostage.

“You really want New York State to turn around and have to cut schools and cut local governments? You know who local governments are? That’s police, firefighters. You want me to cut hospitals?” the grandma-killing governor whined, demanding $61 billion from the rest of the country.

Or Cuomo could end his ban on fracking, which is in his 2021 Coronavirus budget, and be able to hire twice as many firefighters. He could jettison the $700 million for the green buildings fund to fight ‘climate change”, the $640 million for housing projects and the homeless, the $500 million to expand broadband, and jettison the Green Jobs Tax Credit subsidy.

But Cuomo would rather steal from volunteer paramedics than cut green pork.

Of course, the budget also has $2 billion for the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge and other projects.

Cuomo would “cut hospitals” and fire cops and firefighters before cutting into the rotting pie of corruption and green pork that is New York State’s $177 billion budget. And the country’s taxpayers are expected to kick in $61 billion or President Trump and Republicans will be blamed for hurting cops.

It’s not that Governor Cuomo isn’t generous to first responders. Why just last month he urged 50% hazard pay for hospital staff, first responders, and transit employees to be paid for by other states.

“They should be properly compensated,” the crook insisted.

Not by New York, but by the federal government. Why should the rest of the country should be giving New York transit workers bonuses? If you don’t, he’ll fire some cops.

When Mayor Bill de Blasio in New York City tried to hold firefighters hostage, they wouldn’t have it.

The failed 2020 candidate went on CNN and threatened the jobs of cops and firefighters unless New York City gets money from, “the only place that prints money, the only place that could provide the help to get us out of this mess is the federal government.”

“Less than one month after we were receiving record high call volumes, the likes of which we haven’t seen since September 11, our mayor, who’s chief duty is to protect the people of the city, suggests that our jobs are dispensable,” Gerard Fitzgerald, the president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, shot back. “To put it on our backs, to threaten us to go to Washington to try and get more money, it’s just unacceptable.”

But it’s not just New York’s Democrat bosses who are trying to take cops and firefighters hostage.

In neighboring New Jersey, Governor Murphy warned, “we announced a budget on Friday for the next four months and we had to cut or defer over $5 billion of expenditures. And this includes potentially laying off educators, firefighters, police, EMS, health care workers.” If the feds don’t come through.

Boss Murphy wants $20 to $30 trillion from the rest of the country or the cops and firefighters get it.

Meanwhile, Murphy’s budget boasts of restoring $20 million to, among others, Planned Parenthood that had been cut by the Christie administration. Maybe kill fewer kids and you can keep the cops.

New Jersey can also drop its electric bus program, which is part of the 318% increase to New Jersey Transit subsidies. There are also the film tax credits, which Murphy boasts got Joker and West Side Story to film in New Jersey. But why put cops and firefighters ahead of Hollywood film studios?

New Jersey will also be blowing millions on to put electric cars on the road, handing out rebates to wealthy Tesla owners, and funding the Wind Innovation and New Development (WIND) Institute.

Cut the green pork and pay your damn firefighters.

California’s Governor Newsom is also pulling the same stunt.

“It is incumbent upon the federal government to support the states through this difficult time,” he complained on CNN. “Next time they want to salute and celebrate our first responders consider the fact that they will be the first ones laid off by cities and counties.”

Surely there’s something else to cut in California’s mammoth $203 billion budget beyond firefighters?

The January edition of the budget alone aimed $12.5 billion at a 5-year Climate Budget. Take an axe to the $225 million Community Resiliency Centers or the $750 million in homeless funding. Firing fighters and cops is a choice. It’s Newsom’s choice to put illegal aliens ahead of cops and firefighters.

Next time Newsom wants to “salute our heroes”, he should explain why he built a $125 million fund for illegal aliens, instead of keeping first responders employed to protect everyone’s lives and homes.

New York, New Jersey, and California are wealthy states. If they choose to have combined state budgets of over $400 billion, while maintaining a bloated bureaucracy, and spending big on welfare and green pork, that is their choice. It is not the responsibility of the rest of the country to bail them out.

Blue welfare states have forgotten how welfare works. You only get aid when you really need it.

If you’re spending big on discretionary expenses, you can’t suddenly cry poverty and claim that you don’t have enough for your emergency needs. That’s how welfare works in New York, not in America.

Blue states can spend their money on green energy for the homeless or transgender illegal alien poetry competitions taking place in electric cars. That’s a choice made by them and their illegal alien voters. But the entire country is not required to subsidize their ideological addictions and corrupt fiscal habits.

President Trump and responsible members of the House and Senate should shoot down their political blackmail. Cuomo, Murphy, and Newsom have the chutzpah to hold their own firefighters and cops hostage, and in Cuomo’s case even out-of-state volunteers, to extract money from America.

Trump should step in to protect out-of-state volunteers from Cuomo’s threats, and make it clear that every single cop or firefighter losing his job in New York, New Jersey, or California is the victim of the Democrats who put illegal aliens ahead of firefighters and criminal junkies ahead of cops.