Blue New Jersey Vs. Red Kentucky & Federal Spending

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)

From Politifact: 

The past week’s political sandbox match between Gov. Chris Christie and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul kicked up a lot of dust.

But after a week of increasingly insulting barbs between the two possible Republican presidential contenders for 2016, fueled by a disagreement about national security matters, there’s one claim that caught the Truth-O-Meter’s attention – and it’s not whether Christie is the "King of Bacon" when it comes to government spending, as Paul claimed July 30 during an interview on CNN. 

"In fact New Jersey is a donor state, we get 61 cents back on every dollar we send to Washington," Christie said July 30 in response to Rand’s claim that New Jersey has a ‘gimme, gimme, gimme’ attitude about federal spending. "And interestingly Kentucky gets $1.51 on every dollar they send to Washington." 

Kentucky receives more than double what New Jersey gets in federal funding? For this claim, Christie’s got the numbers on his side.

Studies have shown that many classically blue states are net donors while many classically conservative states are net takers. Of course on both sides of this there are exceptions. many conservatives would have you think that liberal/Democratic-led states are the ones who are spending all of the federal dollars (granted in the case of the article quoted above both politicians are Republicans, new Jersey is definitely a tried-and-true blue state). Yet again, the conservative stance is not backed by fact. If there is one thing that we can say about conservatives, it is that they never let the facts stand in their way.

Detriot's Bankruptcy: Bankers Versus Pensioners

People Want Government to Play Moneyball

From Think Progress: 

John Bridgeland and Peter Orszag made a splash with a recent article in the Atlantic Monthly suggesting that the government should learn to play “moneyball.” The term is derived from the way baseball franchises use big data and clever analysis to find the best players for their money, but in the context of government, this means taking the same approach to finding the best bang for the public’s buck. As Bridgeland and Orszag put it:

Based on our rough calculations, less than $1 out of every $100 of government spending is backed by even the most basic evidence that the money is being spent wisely. As former officials in the administrations of Barack Obama (Peter Orszag) and George W. Bush (John Bridgeland), we were flabbergasted by how blindly the federal government spends. In other types of American enterprise, spending decisions are usually quite sophisticated, and are rapidly becoming more so: baseball’s transformation into “moneyball” is one example. But the federal government—where spending decisions are largely based on good intentions, inertia, hunches, partisan politics, and personal relationships—has missed this wave.

How would the public feel about such an approach? Bridgeland and Orszag are on firm ground here according to a 2010 survey I helped conduct for Doing What Works, the Center for American Progress’s government reform project. According to the survey, there is strong support, especially among the younger generation and minorities but also among independents, moderates, and unlikely constituencies like Republicans and tea party supporters, for a government reform plan organized around three core elements: 

1. Eliminating inefficient programs and redirecting support to the most cost-efficient programs

2. Carefully evaluating the performance of individual programs and agencies, and making that information available to the public

3. Using more modern management methods and information technologies...