Nothing new as anyone who keeps track of this kind of stuff already knows that those states reported as red states receive more money from the federal government than do those states reported as blue states. it should also come as no surprise that the blue states spend more on education and healthcare and that the education spending has resulted in higher test scores than the red states receive. Would you be surprised to learn that many of those red states are southern states?
by Avenging Angel Mon Oct 10, 2011
In their never-ending attempts to prevent upper-income tax increases at all costs, Republicans have bemoaned the mythical impacts on small business owners and supposed "job creators." But in pointing out that the Democrats' proposed millionaires' tax to fund the American Jobs Act would disproportionately hit the gilded-class in Blue State America, the right-wing's latest gambit only serves to make liberals' case for them. As it turns out, for years blue state taxpayers have been willingly funding the education, health care and so much else for their red state brethren.
While Republicans have stonewalled the progress of President Obama's jobs program and the debt super committee's workover modest increases in tax rates for the wealthy, Tucker Carlson's reliably Republican Daily Caller offered a novel argument in carrying the conservatives' water:
The millionaire tax being pushed by Senate Democrats this week would hit taxpayers in Democrat-dominated states almost twice as hard as those in Republican-dominated states, according to an analysis by The Daily Caller...
For example, the 5.6 percent tax on million-dollar earners will hit 0.7 percent of taxpayers in New York, 1.2 percent of taxpayers in Connecticut and 0.4 percent of taxpayers in Colorado, according to an Oct. 6 report by the left-of-center group Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ).
On average, 2.9 percent of taxpayers in the 18 states that elect two Democratic senators would be forced to pay the millionaire's surtax if it becomes law.
In contrast, only 1.7 percent of people in the 15 states that send two Republicans to the Senate would pay the surtax.
Of course, red state socialism - that is, the one way flow of federal tax dollars from Democratic-voting states to Republican ones - has been a feature of American politics for years.
As a 2007 analysis (above) of federal spending per tax dollar received by state shows, the reddest states generally reaped the most green. Eight of the top 10 beneficiaries of federal largesse voted for John McCain for President. Unsurprisingly, all 10 states at the bottom of the list - those whose outflow of tax revenue is funding programs elsewhere in the country - all voted for Barack Obama in 2008. As Paul Rosenberg demonstrated, net beneficiary states similarly voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004.
The numbers for Sarah Palin's Alaska are particularly telling. While then-Governor Palin declared she would reject $288 million (31%) of the $931 million in stimulus funds allocated for schools, energy assistance and social services, her state led the nation in earmark dollars received per capita in the last omnibus spending bill during her tenure. (Alaskans got almost $210 per person in earmarks, while Californians got $16 and New Yorkers $13 in comparison.) Overall, Alaska ranked third in the federal gravy train, taking in $1.84 from Washington for each dollar sent there. Which makes Palin's parting words to her state ("We can resist enslavement to big central government that crushes hope and opportunity. Be wary of accepting government largesse; it doesn't come free. And often, accepting it takes away everything that is free") all the more comical.
The red state gravy train is especially full when it comes to federal education spending.
During the battles over Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's union-busting earlier this year, conservative commentators tried in vain to claim that "blue state education [is] the shame of the nation" and "the very best public high schools in the country are heavily concentrated in red states." Sadly for the purveyors of right-wing propaganda, the bigger picture of American public education isn't a pretty one for their side. As the numbers show, reading comprehension, graduate rates, ACT scores and state education funding are generally lowest where Republicans poll best.
The data showed that Wisconsin schoolchildren out-read the kids in states where Republicans poll best and public workers have the fewest collective bargaining rights. Those know-nothing red states also happen to be where the federal government most heavily subsidizes the local education systems.
The numbers - and the electoral map - tell the tale. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, Wisconsin does in fact spend more per student than some of its Midwestern neighbors even as its pupils score less well. But with 34% of its eighth graders students at or above the target reading proficiency, Wisconsin far outperforms the Republicans' solid south (and the national average of 30%). Only Kentucky, which receives substantially more money from DC can match Wisconsin's scores. Florida and Texas? Not so much.
Just as telling (as the table above reveals), the woefully inadequate per student spending levels are propped up only by generous federal spending provided by blue state tax payers. Meanwhile, the bluest of states in the Northeast spend more and get what they pay for. In Connecticut, 43% of eighth graders are at or above reading proficiency. The Nutmeg state spends $14,610 per pupil per year. New Hampshire (39%, $11,951), Vermont (40%, $14,421) New Jersey (42%, $17,620), Pennsylvania (40%, $11,741) and Massachusetts (42%, $13,667) pay the price for better educational outcomes.
A similar dynamic is at work when it comes to health care, too. Blue state Americans help pay red staters' doctors' bills.
It should be noted for starters that health care is worst in precisely those states where Republicans poll best. Findings from the UnitedHealth Group project "America's Health Rankings" last year revealed that Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Hawaii topped the overall health rankings. (It should be noted that Hawaii has offered a near-universal health care system for years while the insurance mandate in Massachusetts has helped reduce the ranks of the uninsured to only 3%.) Eight of the top 10 and 12 of the top 15 states voted for Barack Obama in 2008. In contrast, the McCain/Palin ticket swept nine of the 10 worst performers, most of which are in the Republicans' solid south.
Those results echoed the Commonwealth Fund's 2009 state health care scorecard, which similarly found that health care is worst in those reddest of red states, especially in the South. There, too, Mississippi led the Republican south in providing dismal health care. Again, while nine of the top 10 performing states voted for Barack Obama in 2008, four of the bottom five (including Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Louisiana) and 14 of the last 20 backed John McCain. (That at least is an improvement from the 2007 data, in which all 10 cellar dwellers had voted for George W. Bush three years earlier.) Rick Perry's Texas, which leads the nation in the percentage of uninsured residents, scored a dismal 46th.
As it turns out, these data are as ironic as they are tragic. After all, most of the 26 attorneys general suing to stop the Affordable Care Act signed into law by President Obama come primarily from the same Republican states whose residents are so badly in need of health care reform. And, as the Washington Post explained in "A Red State Booster Shot" two years ago, it would be blue state taxpayers footing the bill:
Health-care reform may be overdue in a country with 45 million uninsured and soaring medical costs, but it will also represent a substantial wealth transfer from the North and the East to the South and the West. The Northeast and the Midwest have much higher rates of coverage than the rest of the country, led by Massachusetts, where all but 3 percent of residents are insured. The disproportionate share of uninsured is in the South and the West, the result of employment patterns, weak unions and stingy state governments. Texas leads the way, with a quarter of its population uninsured; it would be at the top even without its many illegal immigrants.
If you have any doubt that it will be blue staters underwriting red state health care, keep in mind that they already do.
Currently, the $300 billion Medicaid program serves roughly 60 million Americans. On average, the federal government picks up 57% of the tab, with poorer states like Mississippi and Alabama getting 75% of the funding from Washington. Averaging 21.8% of states' spending, Medicaid is now the largest budget item for most. Medicaid not only pays for a third of nursing home care in the United States; it covers a third of all childbirths. (In Texas, the figure is one-half.) As with Medicare, Medicaid provides insurance for substantially less than private insurers (27% less for children, 20% for adults.)
For their part, Republicans have tried to whitewash that reality by pretending, as Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour did, that "We have people pull up at the pharmacy window in a BMW and say they can't afford their co-payment." And by calling both for Medicaid gutted and to be turned into block grant program and for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, GOP leaders like Barbour and Paul Ryan would guarantee that millions of Americans would go without health care. Especially in Republican states.
Nevertheless, Republican propagandists will try to frighten Americans about the onerous impact of upper-income tax increases like the millionaire surcharge. (They will also fret about "America's vanishing millionaires," yet another thoroughly debunked conservative talking point.) They forget that despite his promise to raise their taxes, affluent voters supported Barack Obama for President in 2008. More importantly, blue state residents have shown for decades that they will provide the funding and resources for the education, health care and anti-poverty programs their generally less fortunate red state neighbors badly need - and deserve.
That's part of what being an American is - or at least should be - about.
* Crossposted at Perrspectives *
Originally posted to Avenging Angel on Mon Oct 10, 2011
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