The financial outlook for many of America’s blue cities and states has become increasingly grim. According to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, the cumulative debt of local governments has grown by $1.3 trillion, or almost 50 percent, over the past decade; states and cities run by Democrats over most of that period account for two thirds of the surge.
Even more troubling is the sharp split between the way that Republican-leaning and Democratic-leaning jurisdictions are attempting to manage their budgets: the former by cutting spending and lowering taxes to attract new residents, the latter by raising taxes to cover their ever-growing deficits. Not only has this led to a widely observed migration of high earners from blue states to red ones, but according to a recent Brookings study, it has also led foreign investors to confine their financing of new US factories and office buildings to GOP-controlled areas.
Some blue governments may be closer to default than is generally supposed. Chicago is now floating bonds, not for capital improvements, but for legal settlements, worker compensation, and other operational expenses. As a February 2026 editorial in the hometown Tribune put it, Mayor Brandon Johnson is “leaving his successors with a financial ash heap.” Meanwhile, according to a report from the respected Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association, San Francisco is facing “a fiscal crisis unlike any in its history.” As for the state of California, Alpha Strategies Investment Consultants president Jay Rogers recently warned the owners of its municipal bonds against imagining they hold a safe investment.