MIchigan related: What can we do to stop being a tax donor state
As most people know, Michigan is still a donor state. For every dollar we send to Washington, we receive less than one dollar back. I believe there are only 13 donor states [[give or take a couple).
The historical data may be found here: http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/f...s-20071016.swf
My question: We obviously have weak leadership - How can we , as citizens have a voice to change this and get, at minimum, a $1 for $1 return on our money.
To put it in perspective: Between 1981 - 05 we sent $176,614,000,000 more to Washington than we received in return. Even to this day we are still a donor state.
How can we change this?
Military, Retirement, and Formulas
As mentioned earlier, a lot of the disparity is in military and retirement spending. And unless the military decides to open a lot of new bases or people suddenly decide they like snow as part of their retirement, there's not much that can be done about that. Much of the rest is in the formulas for distributing money such as highway and homeland security funds, which always favor the smaller states. This is where equal representation in the Senate comes into play, because the price for getting support for these programs from the Senators from, e.g., AK, AR, DE, HA, ID, IA, KS, ME, MS, MT, NE, NV, NH, NM, ND, OK, OR, RI, SC, SD, UT, VT, WV, is a disproportionate split of the funding. [[Note that the modern requirement for 60 votes in the Senate to do anything enters into this as well - the above states are sufficient to sustain a filibuster, and they're not all of the states with below-average populations). This is why counties with 20,000 residents in rural states were able to buy armored personnel carriers for their sheriffs with homeland security funds, while the real targets are someplace else.
Unless your Senator is chair of the Appropriations Committee [[Robert Byrd), there's a limited amount senators or representatives can do to direct spending to their state. High profile projects can be funded, as can earmarks, but these largely or completely come out of funds that would have gone to the state anyway.