You're giving me grief for cherry picking? Right before you cherry pick on your own.
Do you really think that Florida residents putting in 205 Billion...and only collecting 26.8 Billion from the Government? If that was remotely true, we'd be running the biggest government surplus the world has every seen.
You're citing direct funding to State coffers, and ignore total Federal spending. That link below? All it lists are grants. Cherry picking, and ignoring the big ticket items.
ALL STATES are taking more.....billions more..... than they are sending to the Federal government. Why do you think our deficit is running in the Trillions?
Yep. Do you think that they're taking out more than they put in? Take a wild guess. (SS is built on the math of increasing US population)
That only counts payments that lands in a State-run bank account. It doesn't count one penny that goes directly from the Federal Government to a Hospital/HMO, for example.
My argument is simple: our entire economy is built on borrowed money, and some States take a *hit-ton more than others. Florida is one of them, simply because of all the people on Medicare. Pull that borrowed Federal money out? Florida is F'ed.
Colorado was lucky enough to have a fracking boom. But as with all other States, if you pull that Federal Money out? We'd be F'ed.
New York? You could pave the roads with gold if you simply did two things: Pass a balanced budget amendment on the Federal level. And secondly, pass a "State Balanced Budget Amendment", where each State got $.95 for every dollar they send to DC. Five cents for overhead.
Do that? Pretty much every State but Cali, Texas, NY, CT, and IL would be hurting. And AL, MI? Sooooooo screwed. Second world nation status in five years.