By Laura Bassett / Special to The Washington Post
Because the novel coronavirus pandemic hit some urban blue states harder than more rural red ones, several politicians now openly disdain the idea of federal aid flowing to states of the wrong color. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., opposed what he called “blue state bailouts” and said the federal government should just let suffering states such as New York file for bankruptcy.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D, pointed out that his state contributes the most money to the federal government, while Kentucky “is the number three state in taking from the federal pot.” Preet Bharara, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, put it this way: “If Kentucky’s most powerful politician will callously deny New York in its direst hour of need, then there needs to be a severe calibration. Severe.”
But fighting a pandemic is not a matter of tit-for-tat fairness, and subsidizing states is the way a republic is supposed to work. The point of a federated nation is that no part must be self-sufficient, and we are supposed to share a communal responsibility. We all pay into a pot that should be used to provide for and protect us all, especially those who most need it.
The pandemic has already exacerbated political polarization, as President Trump has encouraged Republicans in swing states with Democratic governors to protest the stay-at-home measures. And because blue states tend to be more densely populated, and thus have struggled to procure the ventilators and other equipment needed to deal with a rapid surge in patients, this crisis has deepened that divide by flipping the script on who needs federal aid. New York, the financial center of the country, is in the rare position of needing extra aid from the federal government right now, just as Kentucky relies heavily on federal money to stay afloat during normal times.
But the idea that someone struggling in a red state, who was likely born with less access to money, education and health care, should be denied help because of their ZIP code and the political leanings of their state is abhorrent. To punish the people of Kentucky because of McConnell’s behavior would also be to retaliate against the state’s black, majority-Democratic residents for the behavior of a man they did not elect. In fact, in the last election where McConnell ran, a majority of registered Kentuckians did not vote at all.
The rest of the United States benefits from Democratic California and Republican Texas, the top two agriculture-producing states. All states benefit from states such as Georgia and Alaska, which have the highest average number of people enlisted in the military.
That’s not an argument for scorekeeping. Americans share a communal responsibility for one another; the federal government is gladly willing to pay for the Medicaid programs in Southern states, and, in turn, Kentuckians pay tax revenue that goes toward infrastructure in major metropolises in New York.
I live in Brooklyn, but I was born and raised in a red state, and I cannot imagine my family or the people in my hometown being denied federal help in a time of need because the men who hold the purse strings see them as being on the wrong team. I grew up in Opelousas, Louisiana, a charming little Cajun town that happens to be one of the poorest cities in an already-poor state with an abysmal health-care system.
My parents are worried about me, since New York City is the national epicenter of the pandemic, and I am even more worried about them down there. Louisiana experienced an explosive coronavirus outbreak after Mardi Gras and is notorious for heavy partying. (We thought my grandmother was dead after Hurricane Katrina because we couldn’t find her for a week, and then she showed up at our door, covered in mud, asking for a cocktail.)
Americans did not care about Louisiana’s tax receipts after my home state was underwater after Katrina. And when liberals now talk about paying for states that vote Republican, they ignore the fact that both Louisiana and Kentucky have Democratic governors.
The logic of gladly assisting the most distressed states doesn’t change now that New York is in trouble. There’s no reason to look at the country in terms of a blue team and a red team, the deserving and the undeserving. The whole purpose of setting up a federated republic was for all the states to take care of one another, and that has never been more necessary than now.
Laura Bassett is a freelance journalist and commentator on politics, gender and culture.
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