A common lame liberal talking point is that the GOP states are doing better than Democrat states because the red states are more subsidized by the federal government. It’s often not true, as well as rather trivial — I’ve written about this before. Here’s one of my somewhat wonky articles on the topic:
https://riderrants.blogspot.com/2016/11/per-capita-federal-taxes-and-spending.html
But now we have another example. The graphic below shows all the states that are borrowing from Uncle Sam (well, Uncle Biden) to bail out their massive unemployment spending. CA leads the pack, but — to be fair — it’s also the most populous state. That being said, in this instance, California is borrowing more unemployment funds per capita from the feds than any other state.
What’s interesting is that the second worst state borrowing from the feds to fund their state unemployment programs is NY. Both TX and FL have larger populations than NY, but these two GOP states are not borrowing from the feds AT ALL to fund THEIR state unemployment payouts.
Indeed, looking at the all the above states (and the Virgin Islands) that are borrowing from the feds for unemployment payouts, ALL are controlled by Democrats. NONE of the GOP states have taken out such federal unemployment loans during this pandemic.
Is anyone surprised?Finally, consider this: Governor Newsom et al love to claim that the state of California has a huge budget surplus. Assuming that’s true, why on earth is the state borrowing billions and billions from the feds so that the CA unemployment benefits can be paid out? Inquiring minds want to know.