I believe you’re looking at the wrong table (Table 1 is military only…I did the same thing). If you look at Table 4 (which is total expenditures), of the cited six states, only Texas is spending less than it gives.
Could someone explain some of the economics here to me? I’m serious–I don’t get whether the success of the stimulus depends on its being used in all of the 50 states, so that the Pub Govs’s “threat”(yeah, right! ooh, I’m shaking!) to reject the federal funding makes it harder for the stimulus to have an effect, or if it just shoots the people in those states in the foot.
Seems to me if the latter is operative, then shouldn’t we just say “Cool, now we have a way to test the effectiveness of the stim–State A took the money and now they’re doing pretty good, while State B, which volunteered to serve as the control in this experiment, is even further down the toilet than they were before the stim bill passed, in fact their local economy is in total free-fall.” I’m guessing that we need as many states as possible to participate, because otherwise the Dems would just be saying “Excellent–that’s more money we can direct to State’s economy, then,” correct?
As one of the uneducated dolts from one of the backward states, I thought I’d put Alaska in perspective. Palin gains street cred by saying she won’t accept stimulus money, but taking that stance causes no pain to the state. She can afford to be noble and all right-wingy because she’s sitting on over $40 billion in the Permanent Fund that could be tapped by the legislature, should the Alaska economy collapse. No political skin off her skanky ass. In addition, should there not be enough revenue to run the state, there’s always the Constitutional Budget Reserve (CBR), which is also tied to the Permanent Fund, to bail out those whose poor planning and lack of balls has placed us in that position.
Then we have our senior Senator, Lisa Murkowski, voting against the stim package along with the rest of the Resentful Right, and taking every opportunity to decry the foulness of the whole idea. At the same time, she is jostling hard at the trough with the rest of the piggies to “make sure Alaska gets its fair share.” So much for conservative principles.
I didn’t vote for either one of them, so I guess that makes me less stupider than the rest of the ignorant toads that make up our state.
Thanks for the heads-up. You’re right, and I should have read more carefully.
Still, the points stand. Not all of those states get more than they pay. Of those that do, so what? The function of the Federal Government is to help share the resources so all states can benefit. It doesn’t do us any good to allow the prosperous areas of the country to prosper while the other areas turn into slums which breed crime and discontent. If those states need more money for things the Feds are tasked with(building roads, interstate commerce, etc.) then they should get it. It’s the basic function of a government to provide a level of services to all citizens, regardless of the relative wealth of their political subdivision(state, city, etc.).
Enjoy,
Steven
It’s all good…as I said, I did the same thing.
I agree with you for the most part. These states are united, and the good of the worst-off among us is to the good of all of us.
On the other hand, to make claims of fiscal responsibility (which, by my perception, often has a corresponding and disproportional sense of superiority) when a state consistently takes more over the long term than it puts in is incredibly hypocritical. Effectively, this “share and share alike” concept is a form of welfare, roundly held as anathema…but seemingly only when applied to others (or, at least, to individuals).
The CBS/New York Times poll out today showed well over 50% of people in each region of the country (71% in the south) were either very or somewhat concerned about someone in their household being out of work in the next 12 months. I’m sure rejecting unemployment aid will go down real good with this population.
And you thought Earl Long was Louisiana’s most insane governor.
As Jon Stewart pointed out, Jindal is only accepting $3.7 billion, not the full $3.8 billion. Conservative principles, ya know.
And now Tennessee’s crackpot-of-honor is talking about turning it down!:smack: