Chart of the Day: Voting Your Pocketbook

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We’ve seen this before, but why not see it again? Jeff Frankel shows graphically today the disconnect between how much net money the various states get from the federal government vs. how those states’ residents feel about government spending. Long story short, the ones who say they hate government the most are also the ones who are sucking the hardest at the federal teat.

Now, there are enough problems with calculating state shares of federal spending that you have to take this with a grain of salt. Still, it’s a solid point. If you want to kvetch about federal spending, that’s fine. But if you’re going to do it, how about first giving back some of your federal largesse to the states that provided it to you in the first place?

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