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LAST year Newt Gingrich characterized New York as a “culture of waste,” one that depends on “us to send a check.” But in Pat Moynihan’s view, the Speaker has it backward. A report commissioned by the senator finds that Empire State residents pay $1.24 in federal taxes for every federal dollar spent in the state. New York State sent $17.7 billion, or $948 per capita, more to Washington in federal taxes last year than it got back in federal spending. (Only nine states had worse per-capita “deficits.”) Georgia, meanwhile, paid only 97 cents for every $1 of federal funds received.

But this is nothing new. New York has been a donor state ever since Moynihan began doing the calculations back in 1977, as have Illinois, New Jersey, Michigan, Connecticut, Ohio—states powered by the metropolitan economies of older cities. Meanwhile, the home state of the Speaker is one of many Southern, now largely Republican states that receive more from the Federal Government than they send out in taxes.

ER

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Ed Rubenstein

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LAST year Newt Gingrich characterized New York as a “culture of waste,” one that depends on “us to send a check.” But in Pat Moynihan’s view, the Speaker has it backward. A report commissioned by the senator finds that Empire State residents pay $1.24 in federal taxes for every federal dollar spent in the state. New York State sent $17.7 billion, or $948 per capita, more to Washington in federal taxes last year than it got back in federal spending. (Only nine states had worse per-capita “deficits.”) Georgia, meanwhile, paid only 97 cents for every $1 of federal funds received.

But this is nothing new. New York has been a donor state ever since Moynihan began doing the calculations back in 1977, as have Illinois, New Jersey, Michigan, Connecticut, Ohio—states powered by the metropolitan economies of older cities. Meanwhile, the home state of the Speaker is one of many Southern, now largely Republican states that receive more from the Federal Government than they send out in taxes.