Takers, Givers, and a National Divorce

  Do Democrat or Republican States Receive More 

       Funding from the Federal Government?

    From MoneyGeek.com, 2/27/22

There’s no question that the biggest bluest states with the biggest bluest urban centers generate GDPs that mirror large independent nations… each! While Florida and Texas have their share of successful urban job centers, those are mostly their own blue cities with Democratic mayors. So, in response to rising call from extremists on both the rights and the left, those who believe that a national “divorce” is necessary, you have to ask yourself whether blue or red America would fare better in such a separation. Which states rely most heavily on net revenue from the federal government? The above chart gives you a big hint, but more on this later. Yet, is anyone seriously suggesting the nation would be better off hived in two?

The loudest cries for a national red/blue partition – breaking the United States apart – come from elected politicians from the MAGA right. None more clearly enunciate that goal louder than Republican Speaker McCarthy’s seeming new favorite Congressperson, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R, Georgia). On President’s Day, Greene tweeted the idea for a "national divorce" for people sick of Democrats' "traitorous" policies. Many in her Party believe that Abraham Lincoln’s willingness to fight the Civil War to keep our nation united was the biggest mistake in our history. That he was a Republican is not usually mentioned in such tirades. 

The notion of a White Christian nationalist state bordering rich blue America (mostly the coastal United States including some in the Great Lakes area) may not be the most comforting reality for those in smaller, crowded blue cities. And while Texas and Florida offer major economic strength plus large harbors to transoceanic passageways, much of red state America relies heavily on the New York financial markets and the California technology centers – and more than a few agricultural mainstays. With Canada as a major oil and gas producer (in addition to California), not to mention a huge producer of grain, West Coast America would lack for very little. 

The Upper Midwest would benefit from the Great Lakes and perhaps the St Lawrence seaway for its oceanic corridor. But clearly, there would be disenchanted pockets of MAGA constituents stuck in red states and vice versa. Would Blue America be a single nation or more of a European Union aggregation? I suspect Red America would seriously be linked in one nation, but bluish states like New Mexico would probably hope that Arizona flips blue permanently. The economics and military realities of separation would be almost impossible to determine. Who gets the military facilities and manpower? Nuclear weapons? How is the national debt divided?

Assuming that these issues were to be resolved – unlikely without a civil war – who gets hurt the most by this unraveling? Red or blue? The November 27th MoneyGeek.com just may have the definitive answer. Visit the article to see a state-by-state breakdown. “To put states' financial health — and the potential impact on residents of those states — into context, MoneyGeek analyzed and ranked states according to their dependence on the federal government. Rankings account for political affiliation, net benefits individuals and organizations in the state receive, state government revenue from federal sources and GDP per capita.

• 7 of the 10 states most dependent on the federal government were Republican-voting, with the average red state receiving $1.05 per dollar spent.
• Twenty-nine states sent more to the federal government than they received, compared to just nine states in 2021.
• Of the states that sent more than they received, 52% were Democrat-voting and 48% were Republican-voting.
• New Mexico had the highest return on federal spending of any state ($3.69), and Delaware had the lowest ($0.32).” Organizational symbols added. 

But the headline, well expressed in the above graphic (based on percentage of state reliance on federal tax dollar benefits), is that overall, red states rely much more on receiving that federal contribution at a vastly higher rate than do blue states. In other words, blue states as a whole are seriously subsidizing red states as a whole. On a simple basis, blue states would generate the greatest economic benefit from a blue/red partition, leaving the much poorer red state aggregation with a lot less governmental money… absent major new taxes or a restructuring whereby rich red states, like Texas and Florida, pick up the slack. Hmmm.

Senator Mitt Romney (R. Utah), often referred as a RINO by the MAGA GOP majority, shot back at “crazy” Marjorie Taylor Green, telling The Salt Lake Tribune on February 21st: “I think Abraham Lincoln dealt with that kind of insanity. We're not going to divide the country. It's united we stand and divided we fall.” 

As Lincoln noted when he faced the same crisis well over a century and a half ago, there is no provision in the US Constitution even for a voluntary partition. And while a national referendum taken today, if that were possible, might support Greene’s cherished partition, the constitutional reality suggests that we must just learn to get along. It might take the new generations of rising voters to make that happen, but partition would either be truly a self-inflicted economic blow to us all… or require a truly violent resolution/revolution that would be even worse. Debt ceiling anyone? 

And just remember that, as several recent polls reflect, large numbers of MAGA Second Amendment advocates very much believe that using their guns to reinforce their political position is fully justified. The same “patriotic” Americans who believe, as the GOP official description denotes, that the January 6, 2021 Capitol invaders were “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” A few deaths and serious injuries, destruction of government property, carrying undisguised weapons and insurrectionist rhetoric should never get in the way of that perception.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as long as false hopes are being raised by underinformed politicians, false “facts” are pushed on us by political extremists and false blame on minorities of all kinds is the new normal, we are going to twist in the wind for a nasty while.