As the president has said many times about almost every foreign country in the world regarding trade, “they are ripping us off”. What he means is that the trade imbalance with almost every other country is negative; we buy more from them than we sell to them.
Mr. McConnell has been running point for the argument that if the states are losing money through decreased tax revenue and increased expenditures for healthcare, the best solution would be for those states to declare bankruptcy. This would allow them to eliminate all state-owed pension funds, cut services and stiff vendors.
This is a great one-two punch. I think it should be followed through.
If you look at a chart of each state in this union with respect to whether they are “givers”, in other words that they provide more money to the federal government than they receive back in benefits, or “takers”, those states that receive more money than they contribute, you see some interesting things:
The majority of “giver” states are blue (based on the results of the 2016 election); the majority of “taker” states are red. The blue states are “being ripped off”. They should simply refuse to give money to the federal government until the government agrees to renegotiate their revenue agreements and make it more equitable. Let the “giver” states keep the money and balance their budgets; let the red states make the cuts in government that they already stand for anyway.