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Moochers, deadbeats and hypocrisy
Mike Brake (Commentary, “Oklahoma’s postelection rise,” Nov. 21, Oklahoma Gazette) loves digging in the GOP hole. California (the ninth largest economy in the world) is his latest bogeyman.
According to a 2007 Tax Foundation study (of federal taxes paid versus federal funding received by each state), Californians pay $48 billion more in taxes than they receive in funding, which subsidizes the red states.
(Likewise, New Jersey pays $27 billion more, New York $14 billion, and Illinois $19 billion.)
Of the 34 states receiving more federal money than they are paying in federal taxes, 29 voted for Bush in 2004 (totaling $222 billion in “gifts”). Fifteen of the 16 states paying more than they are receiving voted for Obama in 2008, forking over $146 billion to indulge their shiftless brethren. Florida is the only former Confederate state not sponging off the Yankees.
Oklahoma’s conservative deadbeats scrounge $8 billion a year more in federal spending than they pay in taxes, and the Tax Foundation ranks the state No. 1 in the nation in state spending increases over the past decade due to an explosion in federal grants. Medicaid handouts have doubled to $3 billion, but our “pro-life” leaders value making more tax cuts over spending $15.83 per capita (annually) to insure 200,000 Oklahomans under Obamacare. (Our ancestors gleefully accepted 15 million acres of free land and mineral rights.)
The gold diggers of Alaska pilfer $1.86 for every dollar they pay in taxes. U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky leeches $1.51; Gov. Bobby Jindal’s Louisiana filches $1.78. Rep. Eric Cantor’s Virginia is the prize oinker, snatching an extra $35 billion. Conservatives foam out one side of their mouths about federal spending, and drool out the other over every scrap of pork they can lay their grubby paws on.
Funny
thing how conservative “principles” fly out the window like little
birdies when it comes to the socialistic redistribution of wealth from
the rich liberal states to the pitiable GOP moochers. Imagine the
horrified rebel shrieks if Obama focused spending cuts on the slacker
states.
Brake moans
about entitlement freeloaders, but the vast majority of this spending
goes to seniors, and every working American supports retirees through
payroll taxes, not income taxes — the top 1 percent pay just 22.9
percent of all federal taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center.
Brake can thank “Mission
Accomplished” Bush that 46 percent don’t pay income taxes. Federal
spending in fiscal year 2012 was 22.9 percent of the GDP versus 23.5
percent under Reagan in 1983. If revenues were the same as in 2000
(20.6), the trilliondollar deficit would be 2.3 percent of the GDP, or
$360 billion.
—D.W. Tiffee Norman
this is concise
Gov. Fallin, you don’t have to be Santa to give us affordable health care.
—Steve Darby Oklahoma City
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