-Maryland and Virginia are recipients states! Most of the DC area fed employees live in those states. Norfolk naval Base is in Virginia. DUHHHHH.

Northern VA is one of the most, if not the wealthiest area of the country at the moment largely due to gov jobs. However, the rest of VA is still quite poor except for pockets here and there.
-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.

Richard Shelby is the new earmark king now that Byrd is gone. Shelby steers all sorts of shit to Huntsville as well as various colleges down there. Damn near every school has a building named after him. Politico just did a pretty good write-up about that asshole and how he takes what he wants.

In the end, you have to figure in military spending. The warmer states have large amounts of DoD activity and it isn’t always because of the weather. If Levin really wanted to, he could send a LOT more DoD projects our way. Like I mentioned before, the Detroit area did luck out with BRAC not shutting Selfridge down and actually setting up a huge contracting mission at Tacom in Warren at the expense of Rock Island, IL.