Federal Spending

One thing Democrats do that I absolutely have never understood, is push federal spending on issues as opposed to state spending. For example, rather than having the individual states create socialized medicine programs, they are pushing the issue in the federal government. Why this is a horrible idea makes sense when you look at a map of how much states pay in federal taxes, verses how much money the federal government spends in them:



Source(click on image to enlarge)

Now look at a map of how states voted in 2008:


Source


Democratic states like Massachusetts, New York, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Illinois, and California typically pay a lot more in taxes than they get back.

The only Republican states to do so are Texas, and Georgia and they come out almost even.

This has always struck me as remarkable. It is as if Republicans have used Democrats willingness to spend on big federal programs as a way to manipulate them out of their money(over-representation of small states in the senate explains some of it, but small Democratic states like New Jersey, and Connecticut do quite poorly) . That, and Republicans have never been shy about spending fortunes on pork, while pretending to be against big government.

So if Democrats were smart, they would push to cut every ounce of federal spending they could, crow about how well they did at balancing the budget, than rebuild the programs in their own states. They could save something like 20 cents on the dollar on average by doing so.