As Washington D.C., has tightened its belt in recent years, federal budget cuts have sliced most deeply in states where President Obama is unpopular, according to a new analysis of federal spending by Reuters.
From the 2009 to 2013 fiscal years, federal support for a wide swath of discretionary grant programs, from Head Start preschool education to anti-drug initiatives, fell by an average of 40% in Republican-leaning states such as Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi. By contrast, support to Democratic-leaning states such as California and politically competitive swing states such as Ohio declined by 25%.
Though Congress sets overall spending levels, the Obama administration determines where much of that money ends up. Lawmakers also have curtailed their ability to direct money to their home states when in 2011 they adopted a ban on spending known as “earmarks.”
That ban has given administration officials more power to steer federal money to places that might return the favor with votes, says John Hudak, an expert on federal spending at the centrist Brookings Institution who worked with Reuters on the analysis.
“In the context of the Obama administration, swing states and blue states are doing better than red states,” says Hudak, who uncovered similar spending patterns by previous presidents in his book “Presidential Pork.”
“I would suggest these numbers would tell us there is politicization going on,” he says.
This approach isn’t unique to Obama. Under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Hudak found that purple states got about 7.3% more grants and 5.7% more grant dollars than states that were firmly in one camp. Read the full story.
