Dear Mitch McConnell: Be Very Careful What You Wish For!

After almost 50 years in and around politics, you’d imagine that Mitch McConnell knew enough not to pick a fight that he’s likely to lose. As a rule, you don’t stay in power as long as he has if you make a practice of getting the short end… but in his latest provocative statements, it sure looks like he’s pushing a big rock up a tall hill.

In recent days, we’ve seen the usual confrontation between Republican and Democratic interests take a slightly new angle — the segregation of states with Democratic governors and states with Republican governors for the purpose of policy arguments. This distinction began with Mitch McConnell’s negative reaction to efforts by the Democratic caucus to arrange for financial support for state and local governments and has since been echoed by President Trump in a couple of tweets. A deeper dive, however, demonstrates that both leaders may wish to rethink the strategy, and soon.

Let’s look at the country if this designation were to stick. The new split — considering Blue and Red based on the party of the Governors — cuts the country somewhat in half. Currently, 26 states have Republican Governors, while 24 have Democrats at the helm; population splits are 178,725,465 for Blue states versus 149,576,079 for Red states. A first warning shot for presidential politics — aside from the greater population, the electoral college count for these new Blue states is 291 against 247 in Red states, a losing proposition.

More relevant to this conversation is the stated idea of the states being poorly run, and needing assistance because of that. Here, the numbers are striking: the Blue states pay $2.033 trillion into the treasury, while the Red states produce only $1.404 trillion in revenues. The extra $600 billion dollars is massive; in a very real sense, the Blue states are paying for much of the Red states’ government programs.

This is better illustrated by what is called the Balance of Payments, which measures the amounts that the government takes in against the amount that the government spends in each state. Two states — Maryland (Red) and Virginia (Blue) are irrelevant to the equation since so much of the Federal operations are located in those two states, so let’s look at the remaining 48. The 25 Red states take $322 billion more than they send in… the 23 Blue states take only $135 billion. Over the past five years, the Blue states have taken almost $1 trillion dollars less on a net basis than the Red states have.

The argument that Blue states are more poorly run than Red states is a difficult case, to begin with, based on their tax revenue production, based on their respective drains to the Treasury, or based on any of a broad number of other indicators… and if we have no such excuse, then we have to look at the damage that has been done by the virus. Here, the numbers are stark and important:

Blue States: Cases — 731,000 Deaths — 41,070

Red States: Cases — 264,000 Deaths — 10,631

By itself, NY has tangibly more cases (295,000) and deaths (17,638) than all of the Red states combined. Clearly, the virus has particularly impacted the Blue states, which tend to be coastal and prone to international exposure, then the Red states, which are somewhat more centrally located and have less of a focus on urban densities.

If the case is made that the nature of the Blue states is not the nation’s problem, then there needs to be a reckoning regarding the economy’s dependence on those dense Blues for its prosperity… consider that NY, the state that is probably most in need of help at this time, pays in $35 billion more than it gets back, by far the largest negative balance of any state… were the government to provide $100 billion in aid, it would barely be making up for the funds it has profited from NY over the past three years. The state in line for the second most aid, New Jersey, is also the state with the second most negative balance of payments, some $21 billion.

An interesting factoid for Mr. McConnell to consider: the spread between the Blue and Red states in terms of the balance of revenues versus expenses would be even greater except for one state: McConnell’s own Kentucky, categorized now as a Blue state because of Democratic Governor Andy Beshear. Almost 30% of the Blue state’s total $135 billion balance of payments is due to Kentucky’s $40 billion shortfall. Mr. McConnell has done some special work for his home state, getting Uncle Sam to send them about $75 billion, while contributing only $35 billion in revenues, one of the worst balances of the fifty states.

To top it all off, the effect of McConnell’s bankruptcy suggestion would be to damage the security, pensions and health insurance of today’s most popular group — the first responders across the country — as states, drained by the battle with the virus, would be forced to make difficult cuts in the services that they provide.

McConnell and President Trump

McConnell (and President Trump’s) new approach to divisiveness specifically punishes the part of the country that keeps the federal books afloat, has suffered far and away the most from the pandemic, has highly popular and visible Governors (see Cuomo, Andrew for reference), who would use the money largely to pay heroes and sustain hospitals, and, while he’s at it, would shine a bright light on the barrels of pork that McConnell’s been stacking up in Kentucky warehouses for the past two decades. It would alienate a winning tally of electoral college votes, and put him crossways with the very popular Governor Beshear going into a difficult election.

Given all of that, it sounds a lot more like a rookie mistake than a veteran strategy.