Where Do the Tax Dollars Go? Red or Blue?

Out of curiosity, I looked into which states get the most from the Federal Government as a percent of the dollars they pay in in taxes. You would think that it would be the so-called Blue States with their more liberal positions. Interestingly enough, a blue state is actually much more likely to be subsidising a red state than vice versa.

I got my original list of what percent of tax dollars states send to the Federal Government and what percentage of that they got back in government expenditures in 2005 from this site: http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/f...e-20071009.pdf
and I combined it with a list of red/ blue states according to this one: http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp200.../red-blue.html which takes into consideration other governent positions in addition to how they vote in presidential campaigns and added a "B" for a blue state and a "R" for a red state to the original list from the TaxFoundation.org.



The results:

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State: Federal Spending per Dollar of Federal Taxes: Rank: Blue or Red
New Mexico $2.03 1 R
Mississippi $2.02 2 R
Alaska $1.84 3 R
Louisiana $1.78 4 R
West Virginia $1.76 5 R
North Dakota $1.68 6 R
Alabama $1.66 7 R
South Dakota $1.53 8 R
Kentucky $1.51 9 R
Virginia $1.51 10 R
Montana $1.47 11 R
Hawaii $1.44 12 B
Maine $1.41 13 B
Arkansas $1.41 14 R
Oklahoma $1.36 15 R
South Carolina $1.35 16 R
Missouri $1.32 17 R
Maryland $1.30 18 B
Tennessee $1.27 19 R
Idaho $1.21 20 R
Arizona $1.19 21 R
Kansas $1.12 22 R
Wyoming $1.11 23 R
Iowa $1.10 24 R
Nebraska $1.10 25 R
Vermont $1.08 26 B
North Carolina $1.08 27 R
Pennsylvania $1.07 28 B
Utah $1.07 29 R
Indiana $1.05 30 R
Ohio $1.05 31 R
Georgia $1.01 32 R
Rhode Island $1.00 33 B
Florida $0.97 34 R
Texas $0.94 35 R
Oregon $0.93 36 B
Michigan $0.92 37 B
Washington $0.88 38 B
Wisconsin $0.86 39 B
Massachusetts $0.82 40 B
Colorado $0.81 41 R
New York $0.79 42 B
California $0.78 43 B
Delaware $0.77 44 B
Illinois $0.75 45 B
Minnesota $0.72 46 B
New Hampshire $0.71 47 B
Connecticut $0.69 48 B
Nevada $0.65 49 R
New Jersey $0.61 50 B
District of Columbia $5.55 na
Federal Spending in Each State Per Dollar of Federal Taxes
FY 2005
Source: Tax Foundation, Census Bureau

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All of the 25 highest return states are all red states- getting back more in federal spending than they send in in taxes.

Eighteen states pay the same or more in taxes than they receive in federal spending. Of these, fourteen are so-called blue states.

State rankings in terms of per-capita federal spending:
http://www.nemw.org/fundsrank.htm

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1 Alaska $13,788 R
2 Virginia 12,583 R
3 Maryland 11,972 B
4 New Mexico 10,752 R
5 North Dakota 10,391 R
6 Hawaii 10,018 B
7 South Dakota 9,590 R
8 Wyoming 9,440 R
9 Alabama 9,265 R
10 Mississippi 9,027 R

11 West Virginia 8,909
12 Connecticut 8,827
13 Louisiana 8,815
14 Massachusetts 8,684
15 Maine 8,654
16 Montana 8,350
17 Missouri 8,340
18 Kentucky 8,308
19 Tennessee 8,062
20 Pennsylvania 8,046

21 Rhode Island 7,896
22 Oklahoma 7,816
23 Florida 7,586
24 South Carolina 7,531
25 New York 7,521
26 Arizona 7,500
27 Vermont 7,495
28 Kansas 7,474
29 Washington 7,389
30 Arkansas 7,354

31 Nebraska 7,289
32 Iowa 6,884
33 North Carolina 6,817
34 Ohio 6,796
35 New Jersey 6,771
36 Indiana 6,768
37 Idaho 6,731
38 California 6,725
39 Colorado 6,670
40 Georgia 6,571

41 Delaware 6,537 B
42 Texas 6,509 R
43 Michigan 6,410 B
44 New Hampshire 6,393 B
45 Illinois 6,351 B
46 Oregon 6,279 B
47 Wisconsin 6,091 B
48 Minnesota 6,075 B
49 Utah 5,917 R
50 Nevada 5,849 R

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On this list, I only did "Red State/ Blue State" for the top and bottom ten. Of these, nine of the top ten in terms of per capita federal spending were Red States and seven of the ten with the lowest per capita federal spending were Blue States.