The non-profit Tax Foundation, a 501-c-3 Washington DC think tank founded in 1937, keeps detailed state-by-state summaries on federal revenues and spending.
The foundation reports that Nevadans’ per capita federal tax bill in 1983, the year Reid went to Washington, was $2,982, fourth highest in the US. Federal funds per capita received by Nevada that year amounted to $2,908, sixteenth highest in the nation.
By 2005, the latest year for which figures were shown in the foundation’s report, Nevadans’ per capita tax bill was $8,417, sixth highest in the nation. But per capita federal revenues received by Nevada amounted to only $5,889, lowest of all 50 states.
In another measure, in 1983 Nevadans received $0.85 for every federal tax dollar we paid; by 2005 that figure had dropped to $0.65, forty ninth in the nation. Would the number one state be California or New York with their huge congressional delegations? Nope. The winner was New Mexico garnering a whopping $2.03 in federal revenues for every tax dollar New Mexico taxpayers sent to Washington.
I think I have an Angle on that.
(Jim Clark is President of Republican Advocates, a vice chair of the Washoe County GOP and a member of the Nevada GOP Central Committee)
