Not new info but state payback from Fed is interesting.

[dmallind]

I dug up these data to answer a tongue in cheek thread (at least I hope it was!) about which states we could sell off to help pay the debt, but a pattern I had seen before but forgotten struck me.

There are just FOUR red states that pay more in federal taxes than they receive in federal spending. Out of 31. Of those 4 one will almost certainly be blue this time and two more are swing states. Only TX out of reliably and likely future red states does not suckle off the government teat - and that only just at a $0.94 rate.

Conversely,
just four out of 19 blue states get any positive return from the feds - one of those (PA) being a swing state.

Again I don't think this is unknown to most keen observers, but should we not be able to use it more powerfully when confronting "big gubmint" arguments? I mean it's not as if it could easily be argued that this is due to any strategic reasons, as the coastal states (and therefore most useful for defense purposes against foreign attackers at least) are about evenly split.

It could be especially useful when we have a $1.19/$1.84 pair of leeches running against a $0.75/$0.77 pair of givers.

Heck I even gave a solid RW source to pre-empt complaints of bias for them.


http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/fedspend_per_taxesbystate-20071009.pdf