Follow the money

[maradydd]

Several folks took me to task for the "stuff like highway funding" remark in my last post, so I decided to do a little digging and find some real numbers about how federal expenditures by state break down. Conveniently, the US Census Bureau produces an annual report, Federal Aid to States, which covers all this stuff and explains it with lots of tables and pie charts and things. Let's take a look at how Uncle Sugar gives his kids their allowance, hmm?

On page 9 of the PDF, there is a pie chart which breaks down expenditures by Cabinet department. The Department of Health and Human Services gets the overwhelming majority of the funds allocated, with a whopping $221.0 billion. Housing and Urban Development got $39.4 billion in 2003, and Transportation snuck in just behind with $38.9 billion. The other two biggies are Education ($29.2 billion) and Agriculture ($22.1 billion); all the other departments are lumped in together and total $35.1 billion.

On the same page, another chart accounts for Major Programs. There's not a clear majority here, but there is a clear plurality: Medicare and Medicaid, with $164.3 billion. "Other programs" comes in at #2, with $117.1 billion, and #3 is the Highway Trust Fund (which falls under the Federal Highway Administration, which is part of the Department of Transportation), with $28.6 billion. Like I said, we spend a shitpile of money on our interstates.

Okay, that's nice, but where does all the money go? We're going to skip the per-capita distribution on pages 11 and 13 for the time being, because while it certainly has value, I'm more interested in how many actual dollars get spent per state. That information begins on page 14, and it is very dense. Fortunately, our crack team of researcher here at Radio Free Meredith has analysed them thoroughly, and we present our results for your edification.

Health and Human Services first, because they're the big one. In thousands of dollars:

Alabama	3,331,648	Indiana	3,708,537	Nebraska	1,159,802	South Carolina	3,227,785
Alaska	833,093	Iowa	1,912,417	Nevada	877,958	South Dakota	557,312
Arizona	4,230,467	Kansas	1,576,703	New Hampshire	714,943	Tennessee	5,256,045
Arkansas	2,253,911	Kentucky	3,553,203	New Jersey	5,710,568	Texas	13,197,720
California	26,779,816	Louisiana	4,221,648	New Mexico	2,003,773	Utah	1,192,830
Colorado	2,121,628	Maine	1,519,069	New York	27,695,268	Vermont	654,918
Connecticut	2,548,564x	Maryland	3,496,805	North Carolina	6,053,836	Virginia	2,957,129
Delaware	530,437	Massachusetts	5,578,773	North Dakota	491,060	Washington	4,124,268
Florida	9,968,790	Michigan	6,993,521	Ohio	8,872,309	West Virginia	1,919,417
Georgia	5,652,054	Minnesota	3,567,118	Oklahoma	2,501,992	Wisconsin	4,071,998
Hawaii	729,885	Mississippi	3,021,289	Oregon	2,430,831	Wyoming	328,327
Idaho	826,243	Missouri	4,520,997	Pennsylvania	10,046,226
Illinois	7,399,570	Montana	675,453	Rhode Island	1,146,580

Total to red states: $102,933,376,000
Total to blue states: $115,739,158,000

I must admit this surprised me a little. I figured that the denser urban population of the blue states would give them more HHS funding on a per-state average; I didn't expect the 19 blue states to completely overwhelm the 31 red states in this area.

Next on deck: Housing and Urban Development. Again, in thousands:

Alabama	512,065	Indiana	571,940	Nebraska	161,077	South Carolina	367,733
Alaska	211,612	Iowa	242,720	Nevada	184,811	South Dakota	124,224
Arizona	498,986	Kansas	219,805	New Hampshire	165,785	Tennessee	613,716
Arkansas	260,491	Kentucky	485,183	New Jersey	1,502,409	Texas	1,821,049
California	4,467,112	Louisiana	572,440	New Mexico	191,514	Utah	132,470
Colorado	475,679	Maine	205,343	New York	5,391,938	Vermont	103,628
Connecticut	665,334	Maryland	772,013	North Carolina	791,806	Virginia	682,555
Delaware	104,536	Massachusetts	1,807,016	North Dakota	88,870	Washington	687,213
Florida	1,441,227	Michigan	952,128	Ohio	1,551,609	West Virginia	221,639
Georgia	915,556	Minnesota	620,670	Oklahoma	462,906	Wisconsin	507,761
Hawaii	182,860	Mississippi	308,381	Oregon	351,121	Wyoming	39,625
Idaho	88,261	Missouri	719,494	Pennsylvania	1,803,317
Illinois	2,009,285	Montana	109,520	Rhode Island	294,865

Total for red states: $15,068,964,000
Total for blue states: $22,594,334,000

Another surprise. It's the Department of Housing and Urban Development, after all, so one would expect the densely urban blue states to need a larger share of HUD's money. Still, Texas, Florida, Georgia and Ohio have some pretty big cities in them, and I actually expected a stronger showing from Louisiana (New Orleans, Baton Rouge) and Nevada (Las Vegas). So the surprise isn't that the blue states take more HUD funding than the red states; it's that they take one and a half times as much.

On to my favourite issue of the day, Transportation.

Alabama	692,803	Indiana	736,055	Nebraska	257,112	South Carolina	507,731
Alaska	642,987	Iowa	420,786	Nevada	286,035	South Dakota	252,308
Arizona	604,191	Kansas	400,542	New Hampshire	185,332	Tennessee	671,814
Arkansas	506,278	Kentucky	642,316	New Jersey	977,799	Texas	3,075,609
California	4,350,494	Louisiana	644,798	New Mexico	310,994	Utah	287,079
Colorado	510,824	Maine	213,492	New York	2,198,722	Vermont	124,100
Connecticut	481,507	Maryland	677,553	North Carolina	988,058	Virginia	850,244
Delaware	127,070	Massachusetts	738,935	North Dakota	212,989	Washington	853,864
Florida	2,030,052	Michigan	949,827	Ohio	1,185,831	West Virginia	462,017
Georgia	961,716	Minnesota	557,575	Oklahoma	492,900	Wisconsin	686,008
Hawaii	153,600	Mississippi	466,473	Oregon	628,351	Wyoming	281,520
Idaho	276,132	Missouri	885,553	Pennsylvania	1,824,190
Illinois	1,367,459	Montana	65,977	Rhode Island	175,232

Total for red states: $20,609,724,000
Total for blue states: $17,271,111,000

Finally, one of these matches up with my intuition: red states take home more Department of Transportation funding. The gap isn't as big as I'd expected however. We could take a closer look at the Federal Highway Administration, but they're far and away the largest chunk of the DoT in any case; the FHA's closest runner-up, the Federal Transit Administration, doles out about a fifth of what the highway guys do. (I admit, I'm starting to hit data overload. But isn't it cool that all these data are right here in one PDF for anyone who wants to download it? U.S. Census Bureau, you 0wn.)

Maybe, if I get really bored sometime, I'll make a map that's shaded based on how much highway funding each state gets. My suspicion is that it would get lighter as you moved from south to north, though it wouldn't really drop off until you got above I-80. Poor, unloved Montana. Even Wyoming gets more highway funding than it does, and Wyoming gets shafted everywhere else.

Yes, Hawaii gets interstate highway funding. No, I don't know why either.

Anyway, that's it on the numbers for now; I don't have time to run the numbers for the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Homeland Security, the Interior, Justice, Labor, the Treasury, and Veterans Affairs, plus the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Corporation for National and Community Service, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Election Assistance Commission, the EPA, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities, the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation, the Social Security Administration, the State Justice Institute, and the Tennessee Valley Authority, unless someone is willing to pay me. (If you are willing to pay me, drop me an email and we'll talk.)

So, now that I've done all the dirty work, here comes the part where I get to be crass and petty. Generally speaking, I think we can divide the types of services the federal government funds at the state level into two categories: those targetted at individuals or families, and those targetted at infrastructure. HUD, HHS, and Veterans Affairs are pretty clearly in the first category; Commerce, Defense, Energy, the Interior, Justice, Transportation, and the Treasury, the second. I'm torn on Agriculture, because so much of it goes into subsidies, along with Labor and Education, though if you put a gun to my head and made me pick, I'd throw the latter two into infrastructure. (I still think the Department of Homeland Security is a joke, and not a very funny one at that.)

We've already seen that the states which came up Democrat already get a majority (in some cases, an overwhelming majority) of this social-services funding. This makes the "self-reliance" crack in the article I quoted last post fly even wider off the mark than I originally thought: if self-reliance (or, rather, the lack thereof) is to be measured in federal tax dollars allocated, then how is it that the red states, which both in sum and on average use fewer social-service dollars than the blue states, are somehow less self-reliant?

THere are lies, damned lies, and statistics, people will tell you. I hope that if you've read this far, you've learned something, and I hope that I've been fair in the way I've treated the numbers. For now, though, I'm very tired, and I'm going to go to bed. More later, maybe.

Radio Free Meredith: We think about this stuff so you don't have to.

Comments

[oralelk.livejournal.com]

Interesting numbers! But to make the comparison a bit fairer, here are two questions:

1. What percentage of the population lives in blue states? This would be quite interesting, I think, in evaluating Category 1 Funding (targetted at individuals).

2. What percentage of the federal tax income comes from blue states? They would still have a valid point if the blue states paid for more than the 60% of the federal services they get back.

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

Wow, I was wondering if anyone was even going to read all the way through this. :)

So, what's neat about the Electoral College is that it's basically a mapping from population; states receive as many electors as they have Senators (2 for every state) plus Representatives (proportional to the state's population). This was designed so that neither the high-population Northeast states nor the more numerous but lower-density Southern states (bear in mind, this was back in the late 18th century when all the states were up and down the East Coast) would have an unfair advantage against one another in the electorate. (It's a side-effect of this states'-rights idea that Europeans seem to find terribly confusing.)

So, to get the population distribution, all we have to do is look at the total electoral vote distribution (286 Bush, 252 Kerry) and subtract as follows:

62 from Bush (31 red states)
38 from Kerry (19 blue states)
Another 3 from Kerry (I didn't include the District of Columbia in any of my calculations)

leaving 224 Bush, 211 Kerry.

Naturally, we could also just look up the population figures, but this was faster. ;)

I don't know what percentage of the federal tax income comes from blue states. It should be in the report I linked in the comments thread of the last post, except the full report isn't available yet. Fuckers. I agree it's a good thing to know, though.

[oralelk.livejournal.com]

It's a side-effect of this states'-rights idea that Europeans seem to find terribly confusing.

Hey! Perhaps France and Britain find this confusing, being the overly centralised, old nation states that they are, but we don't! We have a perfectly nice federal setup with a two-chamber parliament, thank you very much, one of whose chambers consists entirely of state representatives, with the number of seats of each state depending loosely on its population.

Of course, the German constitution came about while we were occupied by, among others, the Americans. So it's possible that you had something to do with it all along. :P

[elwe.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure, but I think you could probably get an approximation from a chart the treasury publishes showing the "total taxable resources" of each state (http://www.treas.gov/offices/economic-policy/resources/estimates.shtml). The TTR of the red states in 2002 was estimated to be 5.3 trillion dollars out of a total of 11.3 trillion, leaving 6 trillion for the blue states (so, percenatge-wise, the blue states have 53%). So if this is an accurate way to measure, it looks like there isn't much difference between the taxes paid by the red and blue states

[sophiescat.livejournal.com]

I think the statistics generally used to back the idea that blue (liberal) states fund more conservative ones are more like the ones found here: http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxingspending.html. which looks at how much each state gets back in return for the amount of taxes it pays in.