Some Republicans, especially Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) have been calling for a “national divorce” but recent analysis has shown this could be devastating for red states because they depend heavily on blue states.
MSNBC economic analyst Steve Rattner appeared on Morning Joe and presented data that did not paint a pretty picture for red states. The data shows that states won by former President Donald Trump contribute far less to the federal budget than states won by President Joe Biden. Greene [1] and a few other Republicans [2] have been the top proponents of this “divorce,” Raw Story [3] reports.
Perhaps Greene & Co. don’t understand the full ramifications of this.
“The Trump states, virtually every single state except for Utah, don’t ask me why Utah, got back more from Washington than it paid,” Rattner said. “So it would not really work very well to their advantage to leave. In fact, the top states for getting a better deal from Washington are Kentucky, Mississippi, and West Virginia.”
Unsurprisingly, the states with higher poverty rates corresponded with support for Republican candidates, Rattner said, while states led by Democrats had higher income levels.
As someone who has lived in Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida I witnessed many poor people voicing support for George W. Bush when he was running in 2004, simply because he was a Republican. They had little to no understanding that Republicans rarely do anything for poor people. For them, voting Republican was a knee-jerk reaction and little else.
So Rattner’s analysis hits home with me.
“You can see with your eye that the red states tend to be above the national average in poverty,” he said, presenting a chart demonstrating the correlation. “The blue states tend to be below the national average in poverty. Another way to look at it is if — this is by counties but you get to the same place, on the right, how much of the [gross domestic product] is produced in these places — red counties, 29 percent, blue counties, 71 percent. They’re suffering more economically, and that does lead to the question of, how does that result in more money going to these states?”
Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough was amazed by Rattner’s finding that 71 percent of the GDP came from counties that voted for Biden in the 2020 election.
“This just underlines the fact that it would be devastating for there to be a divide, for those areas that voted for Donald Trump to want a, quote, you know, separation, a divorce from the United States,” Scarborough said. “I mean, yeah, what do you think — well, what other chart — do you have any other charts we can move along to here?”
The way the situation is now, according to Rattner, is that poorer states pay less in federal taxes. He presented additional charts that demonstrated how much states get back in federal spending. The charts showed that Trump states benefited disproportionately from the federal government and would definitely suffer if their funding was cut off.
“They’d have huge economic deficits,” Rattner told Scarborough. “They wouldn’t have money for their projects, they wouldn’t have new bridges, they wouldn’t have federal installations in their districts. They wouldn’t have food stamps, they wouldn’t have Medicaid to help cushion their residents against extreme poverty. It would be a really tough and stupid economic decision. Again, the whole irony of this is you’ve got Republicans who oppose almost every kind of federal spending, who are the biggest beneficiaries of the federal spending that they oppose.”
“Terrible idea for everybody in those red states,” Rattner noted.
So, for millions of unquestioning GOP supporters in red states, this “divorce” could be a bitter one. And the sad fact is that perhaps if this really happened, some of these folks might finally realize Republicans have never cared about them.
Here’s what Rattner had to say in the clip below.
"The whole irony of this is you've got Republicans who oppose kind of almost every kind of federal spending, who are the biggest beneficiaries of the federal spending they oppose."
— @SteveRattner [4] discusses the real impacts of a national divorce https://t.co/2jbT8yzSAH [5]
— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) February 23, 2023 [6]