New York, NY —

Mayor Bloomberg says without help from Albany and Washington, New York City will have to reduce its workforce by more than 20,000 people in order to make ends meet in its next budget. The city's deficit for the next fiscal year has mushroomed, from $1 billion to $4 billion, because of Wall Street's heavy losses. Bloomberg says the deficit would have been $6 billion, if not for earlier cuts.

BLOOMBERG: You can only get so much blood out of a stone and after that this is a headcount thing.

Bloomberg says he'll have to lay off 15,000 teachers unless the state restores proposed cuts in education aid with money from the federal economic stimulus package.

BLOOMBERG: I'm sympathetic to the state. If they want to reduce spending by $770 million, that's fine but just make it up to us with somebody else's money. That somebody else's money is the federal government’s money.

The state is facing its own fiscal crisis of $15.4 billion.