It irritates the hell out of me that I have to keep coming back to this topic. The latest reason is the Republican argument against providing financial assistance to the states in the next stimulus package.
The pandemic should rightfully be a political issue in the 2020 campaign. However, politics should be kept to a minimum with respect to our national response to the pandemic. Americans need help. If the federal government has a purpose, I’d think this would be it.
Republicans are free to argue against providing budgetary help directly to state and local governments. I’ll personally note that those budgets fund things like schools, police, and firefighters. And, since we just spent $2.2 trillion propping up corporations, I’ll contend that also throwing some money at public services isn’t completely out of line. However, a debate on the merits of the funding is at least valid.
My problem is that Republicans aren’t arguing the merits. McConnell said that federal aid would be a “blue state bailout” and Trump claimed it’s “not fair to the Republicans, because all the states that need help, they’re run by Democrats in every case.”
Even if those statements were true (spoiler: they aren’t), they would be entirely beside the point. When disaster strikes one or more states in any form, consideration of their political disposition is simply disgusting.
As to the validity of the statements, here’s just a few quick reminders:
- The two hardest hit areas are New York and California. And, yes, both happen to be Democratic states. However, metropolitan airports in those two states handle 57% of our country’s international flights – the major source of the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S. And who is responsible for international travel into the U.S.? That’s right. The federal government. If you break it, you buy it.
- New York consistently pays the federal government over $35 billion a year more than it gets back. McConnell’s home state of Kentucky consistently receives over $40 billion a year more from the federal government that it pays in. So who exactly is “bailing out” whom?
- Many states controlled by both parties are seeing major budget shortfalls. By no stretch of the imagination is this a “blue state” problem.
- The very red state of Georgia (whose Atlanta airport handles 7% of international flights) is projecting a budget shortfall of about $4 billion.
- The swing state of Florida (whose Miami airport handles 12% of international flights) is looking at a $10 billion budget shortfall.
- My home (and red) state of Texas (whose DFW and Houston airports handle 11% of international flights) doesn’t yet know how bad we’ll be hit (given our 24-month budget cycle). However, the concurrent oil & gas slump isn’t going help things and our financial picture won’t be at all pretty.
While the premise of a “blue state bailout” is easily contradicted by the facts, it just isn’t important. Multiple states need help. It doesn’t matter if those states are red, blue, or green. The federal government needs to their damn jobs and stop playing political games.