CNN host Fareed Zakaria calls out blue cities for excessive overspending

CNN host Fareed Zakaria called out blue cities on Sunday — specifically New York City — for spending more and delivering less to residents.

“New York is really a prime example of a problem Democrats seem unwilling to confront. Blue cities are out of control. Promising more, spending more, delivering less and pushing off the fiscal problems to some future day,” Zakaria said.

The CNN host took aim at a preliminary fiscal year 2027 budget unveiled by NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani that capped out at $127 billion.

“Zohran Mamdani ran on a promise to make New York affordable,” Zakaria said. “Last week, he unveiled a budget that is, in a word, unaffordable. New York has been fiscally profligate for so long that the headline number, $127 billion, produces little shock. But for perspective, these are similar to the annual expenditures of a mid-sized nation with all the expenses a country requires, like Greece or Thailand, devoted to governing one city.”

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The CNN host compared the budget to the budget from 2014 under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, which was around $70 billion.

He said that New York’s population has declined overall and argued that New Yorkers weren’t benefitting from the budget when it comes to education, as “graduation numbers, test scores and reading levels, are at best middling, often comparable to places that spend a fraction of what New York does.”

Zakaria compared New York City’s tax rate to European countries “that provide, in return, universal health care, free college education, and amazing infrastructure.”

“New Yorkers get some 300 miles of sidewalk sheds,” he added.

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New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks to reporters during a news conference in New York on Feb. 17, 2026.  (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

“Mamdani wants to hike income and corporate rates even further, or else he says he will raise property taxes by almost 10 percent. Property taxes already made up more than 27 percent of the costs of homeownership in the city as of 2022, above the national average,” the CNN host said.

Mamdani proposed increasing property taxes on New Yorkers if his increased tax on the wealthy was not approved.

Zakaria took aim at Los Angeles and Chicago as well for big spending on programs that did not seem to help the issues at hand, such as homelessness in LA, which the city budgets about $950 million for in fiscal year 2025-26, according to the city comptroller. Zakaria argued that homelessness had surged 70 percent countywide since 2015, and 80 percent in the city, citing an AP report.

“All this amid public frustration despite billions spent. An audit reviewed 2.4 billion in city homelessness funding and found that officials could not reliably track where it went or what it achieved,” Zakaria said. “Or take Chicago with a mayor whose approval rating is deep underwater where the pension promises are so large that they will surely bankrupt the city at some point.”

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“What is the theory of good government here? If the answer is, keep adding programs, the city will keep producing unaffordability because unaffordability is what happens when government becomes a machine that grows faster than the society it governs,” he said.

“For Democrats in city halls there is a choice. Stop governing as if the goal is to announce new entitlements and instead make government work, safer streets, functioning schools, predictable sanitation and, above all, enough housing that the middle class can find places to live. New York City does not need more soaring rhetoric. It needs more homes,” Zakaria added.

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He expressed support for Matt Yglesias’ argument in favor of making it legal to build market-rate housing.