They'll just blame COVID, like everyone.

Inflation something something

Root server costs should come out of the ICANN fee, which I believe is $0.18/domain year for all domains that aren't in a ccTLD.

Running the TLD servers for .com is likely more challenging than running the root servers; the .com zone is tons bigger, changes more often, and is clearly a commercial endeavor as opposed to the root servers which is collaborative in scope.