Republicans rail against ‘Blue State Bailouts’ while Red America bleeds the country dry – By Daily Kos Staff (Daily Kos) / April 23 2020
Already, impeached president Donald Trump and his parry of idiots is creating conditions for a breakup of the United States of America. They think their efforts to suppress democracy while punishing blue states for caring for their residents will be allowed to continue indefinitely. But that’s not going to happen. And with blue state governors joining in interstate compacts in the west and northeast, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom calling California a “nation-state” (it is the fifth largest economy in the world!), the seeds for a devastating crackup have already been sown. Now, Republicans like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley are pouring gasoline on those first sparks.
Imagine that: McConnell is calling additional federal funding for states suffering under the pandemic lockdown and Trump’s breathtakingly inept handling of the crisis a “Blue State Bailout.”
It’s a theme that supposed “frontier Americans” like to tout, along with their self-reliance and pull-up-their-bootstraps attitudes. Just look at those city folks—especially the Black ones—all relying on government largess. Who can trust those tax-and-spend Democrats anyway? So you get bullshit comments like this:
States should always plan for a rainy day just like any business. I disagree that states should take Fed money or be bailed out. This will lead to taxpayers paying for mismanagement of poorly run states. States need to tighten up, make some cuts, and manage.
— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) April 23, 2020
There is no rainy day fund that would prepare any state for a catastrophe of this magnitude. Is Haley saying that she’s happy to skip receipt of any federal money? Because of course that’s not happening.
But it’s worse than that: South Carolina would not exist in its current form without the largess of the federal budget. According to analysis by the Rockefeller Institute of Government at the State University of New York, South Carolina got backed $1.73 billion in 2017, and $1.61 billion in 2018. That’s quite the return. And who is carrying South Carolina’s dead weight?
Continue to article: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/4/23/1939763/-Republicans-rail-against-Blue-state-bailouts-while-Red-America-bleeds-the-country-dry
