Most Red States Take More Money From Washington Than They Put In

It's no secret: The federal budget is expanding faster than tax revenues, a trend that's been fueled by the rapid growth of entitlement programs and exacerbated by the recession. As a recent New York Times article documents, even as fiscally conservative lawmakers complain about deficit spending, their constituents don't want to give up the Social Security checks, Medicare benefits, and earned income tax credits that provide a safety net for the struggling middle class.

This gap between political perception and fiscal reality is also reflected in the distribution of tax dollars at the state level: Most politically "red" states are financially in the red when it comes to how much money they receive from Washington compared with what their residents pay in taxes.

A look at 2010 Census and IRS data reveals that the 50 states and the District of Columbia, on average, received $1.29 in federal spending for every federal tax dollar they paid. That means that some states are getting a lot more than they put in, and vice versa. The states that contributed more in taxes than they got back in spending were more likely to have voted for Obama in 2008 and were more likely to be largely urban. (There are some clear exceptions: For instance, New Mexico, a rural, Democratic state, gets more federal money per tax dollar than any other state.)

These three interactive maps break down the split between the spenders and lenders. Click on any state for more detailed data, including each state's per capita ratio of spending received versus taxes paid and where it ranked when the Tax Foundation ran the 2005 numbers.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/11/states-federal-taxes-spending-charts-maps