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.