Robbing Blue States to Pay Red
- 7 years ago
Robbing Blue States to Pay Red
After all, their last big legislative drive — the Senate health bill, Graham-Cassidy, which failed in September — also sought a major transfer of resources from blue states
that had done a good job expanding health insurance to red states that hadn’t.
But there is a second kind of redistribution in the plans — from Democratic blue states to Republican red states.
As Representative Lee Zeldin, Republican of New York, lamented, the tax bills are
“taking money from a state like New York to pay for deeper tax cuts elsewhere.”
Republicans’ red-state bias may seem like just more of the same.
Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, derided
that bill as “petty politics” — “just taking the Obamacare money, keeping it and taking it from Democratic states and giving it to Republican states.”
But this nakedly partisan federalism is far from politics as usual.
After all, their last big legislative drive — the Senate health bill, Graham-Cassidy, which failed in September — also sought a major transfer of resources from blue states
that had done a good job expanding health insurance to red states that hadn’t.
But there is a second kind of redistribution in the plans — from Democratic blue states to Republican red states.
As Representative Lee Zeldin, Republican of New York, lamented, the tax bills are
“taking money from a state like New York to pay for deeper tax cuts elsewhere.”
Republicans’ red-state bias may seem like just more of the same.
Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, derided
that bill as “petty politics” — “just taking the Obamacare money, keeping it and taking it from Democratic states and giving it to Republican states.”
But this nakedly partisan federalism is far from politics as usual.