This morning we released our famous annual analysis of federal taxing and spending by state-popularly known as the ‘giving and receiving states’ report. Here’s a map from the study, illustrating which states received the most and least federal spending per dollar of tax paid.

So what explains the distribution of federal taxing and spending? As you can see from the map, states that get the ‘worst deal’-that is, have the lowest ratio of federal spending to taxes paid-are generally high-income states either on the coasts or with robust urban areas (such as Illinois and Minnesota). Perhaps not coincidentally, these ‘donor’ states also tend to vote for Democrat candidates in national elections. Similarly, many states that get the ‘best deal’ are lower-income states in the mid-west and south with expansive rural areas that tend to vote Republican.

News reports commonly interpret this to mean that ‘red state’ lawmakers are more successful at bringing home federal spending than ‘blue state’ lawmakers. It’s often suggested that the way to correct this imbalance is for ‘blue state’ lawmakers to step up efforts to capture additional spending for their states, and for ‘red state’ lawmakers to pare back their voracious appetite for ever-growing pork-barrel spending.

This […]