Monday, Mr. Trump met with Governors and stated that federal money shouldn’t be used to aid poorly run Democratic states and cities.  He seems to be under the false impression that Democratic State contributions to the US economy are somehow exceeded by Republican States.  In a recent RSN Godot article I listed the taxes paid by Red & Blue States and the Federal support each State receives in Federal support [1].  It shows that Blue states contribute $404B more in taxes than they receive in Federal support, while Red states receive $50B more in Federal support than they pay in taxes (nearly a 1/2 trillion dollar difference).  Twenty-five percent of the US population lives in these five states. Mr. Trump either doesn’t know the facts or he decided to just tell another of his thousands of lies.

Let’s examine the contributions of the five Democratic states suffering the most from the Codiv-19 pandemic: New York, California, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Illinois.  These five states have a total Gross State Product of $7,267T [2], about 1/3 of the US GDP. In fact, the Five State Total GSP of $7.2T ranks the five states as the world’s third largest economy [3] behind the US and China and more than $2T greater than Japan, which would be in fourth place.  These five states also contributed $1,157T in federal taxes, which before Trump would have been more than 25% of the total Federal Budget.  Trump’s welfare programs for the largest US corporations, the wealthiest Americans and the large contributions to poorly run Red States have led to very large deficits and a rapidly growing US debt.

Perhaps if Mr. Trump does not want to help these five states that are clearly a major US economic engine, during a major global crisis, he shouldn’t be so ready to accept so much in their annual federal contributions, which he then distributes as Red State and Corporate Welfare.

[1]  “Republican-Red State Democratic Socialism,” (Leonard), RSN GODOT pages

[2]  https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/gdp_by_state

[3]  https://www.investopedia.com/insights/worlds-top-economies/