When even CNN’s Fareed Zakaria is calling out deep blue cities for fiscal chaos, you know something is off.
On Sunday, Zakaria took aim at New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago, arguing that these Democratic strongholds keep promising affordability while delivering the exact opposite. His blunt assessment was hard to miss. “Blue cities are out of control. Promising more, spending more, delivering less and pushing off the fiscal problems to some future day,” he said.
He started with New York, where Mayor Zohran Mamdani is pushing a proposed $127 billion budget. That plan includes a 9.5 percent property tax increase as the city stares down a $5.4 billion shortfall. The gap widened after Governor Kathy Hochul rejected Mamdani’s request to raise taxes on wealthy residents and corporations. So instead of tightening the belt, the answer appears to be higher property taxes on residents already dealing with sky high living costs.
Zakaria did not stop there. He grouped New York with Los Angeles, describing both as one party cities “wrestling with affordability and disorder.” In Los Angeles, the homelessness budget for fiscal year 2025 to 2026 is about $950 million. Yet the Los Angeles Homelessness Services Authority reported homelessness up 9 percent countywide and 10 percent in the city in 2023. An Associated Press report found homelessness has surged 70 percent countywide since 2015 and 80 percent in the city.
Blue cities are out of control, promising more, spending more, delivering less and pushing off fiscal problems to some future day.
Democrats in city halls should stop governing as if the goal is to announce new entitlements, and instead make government work.
My take: pic.twitter.com/kwYkA4XEjx
— Fareed Zakaria (@FareedZakaria) February 22, 2026
Billions spent. Worse results.
Zakaria pointed to an audit of $2.4 billion in Los Angeles homelessness funding that found officials could not reliably track where the money went or what it achieved. That is not a rounding error. That is systemic dysfunction.
Chicago earned a mention as well. Zakaria warned that the city’s pension promises are so large they could eventually bankrupt it. The mayor’s approval ratings are already deep underwater, and fiscal pressures are mounting.
Back in New York, Mamdani recently ended sweeps of homeless encampments. During a January cold snap, 20 people froze to death. Meanwhile, rental assistance spending ballooned from $263 million in fiscal year 2020 to $1.34 billion in the most recently reported fiscal year. Housing costs did not go down. They climbed.
Zakaria argued that while Mamdani is correct to focus on affordability, government subsidies are not the answer. He suggested making it easier to build abundant market rate housing, expand the tax base, and grow local GDP.
That sounds almost like basic economics. Increase supply. Lower costs.
The bigger issue is credibility. Voters are watching budgets explode while sidewalks fill with tents and potholes remain unfilled. In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass even faced public fact checking over basic infrastructure claims and criticism for spending more than $1 million on a two stall restroom near Runyon Canyon.
At some point, ideology has to give way to results. If you spend more every year and conditions keep deteriorating, people notice. Even CNN is noticing now.
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