Chart: Rhode Island sent more money to DC than DC sent back
July 19th, 2012 at 5:00 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
All things considered, Rhode Island is probably better off as part of the United States of America than it would be as an independent country. But we pay for the privilege.
Rhode Island paid $145.6 billion in federal taxes between 1990 and 2009 and got back $139.7 million in federal spending, according to some number-crunching by The Economist. Rhode Island’s fiscal transfer of $6 billion to the rest of the nation was equal to about 8% of the state’s 2009 gross domestic product.
Compared with most other states, America’s fiscal union was close to a wash for Rhode Island. Only New Hampshire transferred a smaller share of its GDP to other states, at 8%, while Massachusetts transferred 41%. Delaware gave the most and New Mexico took the most (excluding Puerto Rico).
Unlike Europe, “America has a real national politics,” Slate’s Matt Yglesias notes. “People think the important question is whether senior citizens get Medicare benefits and which income bracket pays the taxes, not where the seniors are geographically located.”
On a related note, this is also part of the reason why Rhode Island isn’t Greece – the stronger economies in other states have helped pay for federal social programs such as Medicare, unemployment insurance and food stamps that Rhode Islanders are relying on to weather the downturn. E.J. Dionne discusses that here.
(map: The Economist)
Tags: economy, fiscal policy, fiscal transfers, the economist
Nesi's Notes covers politics and the economy in and around Rhode Island for WPRI.com. (Twitter: 
In such a small state with two senators, being ranked 33rd from the top does not give our Senators any bragging rights.
Big shocker here. And yet the people of this state keep voting for Democrats who promise more and more and bigger and bigger federal government. Those Southern Republicans have the right idea. Keep talking about limited government while sucking all the money out of the liberal rubes up North. Meanwhile all the Brown U educated elitists here look down their collective noses at the “poor sumb southerners.”
[...] the map Ted Nesi posts this morning showing which states get more federal dollars than they send to Washington … at a quick glance it looks as if the more conservative the state, the more money they get [...]
By the way, why is the federal government involved in so many transfer of income to start with? Could it be that many of the federal expenditures shouldn’t even be in existence, let alone a federal government activity? I’ll bet if you check, a not inconsequential number of these programs can’
t be found in the enumerated powers given the FEDERAL(not national) government. Want an example?How about education? That’s a matter left to the states. I don’t care as much about if Mississippi gets more than Rhode Island. Why is the federal government in it at all? What evidence is there of demonstrable improvements. What I see is more taxes, more regulations, more command and control over an area none of the Constitutional business of the Federal government. So you “experts”… get out of my face, off my back, and out of my pockets, and try some other line of productive activity.
Well said, bravo!!
Voters are lazy. They vote for the same people over and over regardless of the job they are doing in Washington. Get rid of the two Senators and two Representatives and send new blood to the Congress. Wee need a Scott Brown. Sen. Reed for all his “credentials” barely recognizes RI. Now that it is election time we are hearing from Sen. Whitehouse…too little, too late. The Representatives are useless.