Brett Arends
In the coming months, we're going to choose the two main candidates for president. But we still can't work out how.
The presidential primary calendar is in chaos. Every state, naturally, wants to vote as early as possible. But with no rules about who should go first and why, everyone is rushing the door at once. It's a heck of a way to pick the most powerful person in the world. So here's a radical idea. We still vote for president by state. So why don't we give first shout to the states that are actually paying the bills? Contrary to what you may think, not all of them are equal contributors to the federal purse. Most states, in fact, aren't even net contributors. They and their residents receive more federal spending each year than they pay in taxes. They're living on welfare. Don't believe me? Ask the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C., that's been around since 1937. And every year it analyzes the federal budget and tax receipts to see who is paying in and who's taking out. The most recent analysis - for 2004 -- makes for quite a read. Just 13 states were net contributors to the federal government. Thirteen. The Tax Foundation calls them "donor states," to differentiate them from the all the rest.
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