Chris;

California has the fifth richest economy in the world. We pay more federal taxes than any other state.

“California taxpayers benefit less than almost any other state from each tax dollar sent to the federal government. In 2002, only five states received less in federal funds than they paid in federal taxes, as California taxpayers received only 76 cents in federal expenditures for every dollar in federal taxes. In 1992, by contrast, California taxpayers were receiving 93 cents in federal expenditures on each taxable dollar: yet another example in the rise in taxes in the state of California”.

Would you like to guess why?

http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxingspending.html

Having Arnold for a governator has not helped. Our governator asked the president to improve this and nothing happened. That was to be expected. Perhaps Arnold will wake up one of these days!

Tom



>This says it all:
>
>http://slate.msn.com/id/2109203/
>
>In decades past, increasing Republican dominance of the House and Senate would have meant more fiscal discipline. But Republicans increasingly dominate the states that are net drains on Federal taxes—the Southern and Great Plains states—while fading in the coastal states that produce a disproportionate share of federal revenue. (It's Republicans, not Democrats, who are sucking on the federal teat.) What Amity Shlaes quaintly identified in today's Financial Times as the "southern culture of tax cutting" has been married to the southern culture of failing to generate wealth and the southern culture of depending on federal largesse. The offspring is an unsightly deficit monster.