Biting the hand that feeds you

Or, the surprising story of how blue states subsidize red states

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[UPDATE, 2-28-09: Turns out Gov. Jindal’s juiciest anti-government anecdote— how he and Sheriff Lee faced down a rescue-preventing bureaucrat during Katrina— wasn’t exactly true.  See Jindal Admits Katrina Story Was False.]

Anything strike you as odd about the GOP’s choice of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal to give the response to President Obama’s speech to Congress?

How about this:  Republicans gave the task of making the anti- government pitch to the governor of the state that may well be the leading recipient of federal government largesse.

American taxpayers funded Louisiana’s Katrina recovery, to the tune of something like $300 billion dollars. Yet to hear Gov. Jindal tell it, you’d think Louisianans chose to go it alone.  Crediting their admirable “spirit,” he scoffed at the kind of government assistance that flooded his state with cash from the rest of us.

Hang on to that thought for a moment—red state governor pitching self-determination while surviving on barge-loads of federal cash—and back up to 2005.

Here’s columnist Steven Pearlstein writing in the Washington Post on the day before Pres. Bush’s second inauguration:

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I have in front of me the latest report from the Tax Foundation showing how much each state gets back … for every dollar of taxes paid. And it shows that … the anti-government red states are the net winners in the flow of funds while the pro-government blue states are almost all losers.