By 2010, that had jacked up further still to $2.47. That same year, the Tax Foundation calculates that fully 49 percent of Mississippi’s state general revenue comes from federal taxpayers who will never step foot in Morgan Freeman’s and William Faulkner’s beloved stamping grounds.

It’s not just Mississippi, of course. As lefty publications such as Mother Jones love to point out, “Most Red States Take More Money from Washington Than They Put In.”In 2010, states overall received $1.29 in federal gravy for every dollar residents kicked toward D.C. (such a persistent mismatch between money in and money out exemplifies what I’ve called Groupon Government and explains massive and mounting debt and deficits). Besides Mississippi, other notable red-state freeloaders included Alabama ($2.03), Alaska ($1.93), and South Carolina ($1.92). “Republican states, on average, received $1.46 in federal spending for every tax dollar paid,” writes Dave Gilson. “Democratic states, on average, received $1.16.” Shame on both sides for bilking the system—and props to places as generous and different as Delaware (which received just 38 cents per dollar paid), New York (72 cents), California (87 cents), Texas (85 cents), and Massachusetts (83 cents).

Cochran and his bipartisan supporters—he was by all accounts helped in his victory over Tea Party favorite Chris McDaniel by Democrats both in and out of Mississippi—underscore just how powerful the fiscally unsustainable status quo really is (a federal government that kicks out $1.29 to states for every dollar they send in will eventually hit the skids). Sure, Cochran may be a Republican and he may call himself a conservative advocate of limited government. Yet he has rarely met an expansion of government power and spending he couldn’t warm up to (in this, he is very similar to former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor).

Of course Cochran was in favor of invading Iraq and nation-building there, and he has always supported more money for the military (if he quibbles with foreign interventions, it’s clearly because of partisan politics, not deeply held principle). He voted not just for the Patriot Act, but its various reauthorizations, and he doesn’t give a rip about government spying on its citizens….(read more)

The Daily Beast