Under Donald Trump, Washington gets more back in federal money than it pays in taxes
President Donald Trump’s popularity in Washington is among the lowest of any state in the nation — yet since he took office, the state is no longer a “donor state” that pays more to the federal government than it receives.
Washington got $722 million more from the government than it sent in fiscal 2018, the 12-month period that began in October 2017, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Rockefeller Institute for Government in Albany, New York.
Benjamin Brunjes, an assistant professor at the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Policy and Governance, cited three reasons the state has seen a Trump-era spending surge:
▪ More retirees. The number of people over 65 in Washington has risen steadily since 2000, meaning far more people are receiving what’s called direct payments from Washington, mostly from Social Security. Brunjes called these payments “the primary driver of increased spending in the state.”
▪ More spending on social services. Brunjes found that the state Department of Social and Health Services has seen its revenues roughly double from 2012 to 2019, mostly because of federal grants for Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for lower income people, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Trump has little control over how this money is spent.
▪ More defense spending. Between 2012 and 2015, the Obama administration cut spending on defense contracts in Washington by about 30 percent. In 2016, in what Brunjes called typical election-year behavior, defense spending rebounded. Trump has not reduced that spending.
Yet the president remains deeply unpopular in Washington.
He began his term with a 45% state approval rating, according to the Morning Consult poll.
It’s consistently fallen since then, and last month was 36%, while 61% disapproved. The approval-disapproval gap is one of the largest in the country.
Trump probably gets little credit because state residents see the spending as “systemic benefits that are accruing despite President Trump’s often open hostility towards social programs,” Brunjes said.
After all, he said, Social Security and aid to needy families have their roots in President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, and Medicare and Medicaid are credited to President Lyndon Johnson.
“It is probably difficult for President Trump and other Republicans to claim responsibility for policies that came from the other party and of which they have long been outspoken critics,” Brunjes said.
Trump’s ability to affect a lot of the spending is also very limited. Paul Guppy, vice president for research at the Seattle-based Washington Policy Center, a free market conservative group, noted that much of the political “horse trading” on spending is done in Congress.
“The president is not in a position to direct money to help or hurt certain programs,” Guppy said.
The state still ranked low in the tax vs. spending calculation — Washington gets back $1.01 for every dollar it pays – but the latest figure for Washington state shows a sharp contrast from fiscal 2015 and 2016.
In 2015, Washington sent $1.1 billion more to Washington in taxes and other payments than it got, and in 2016, it paid $2.96 billion more than it received — the sixth biggest donor state in the nation. Only New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Illinois had bigger imbalances.
In fiscal 2017, President Barack Obama’s last budget, the turnaround began. That year Washington got $383 million more than it paid. Under Trump, the difference rose even more.
Data from USASpending.com, the federal government database, showed consistently higher levels of spending in Washington, from $50.5 billion in fiscal 2015 to $66.25 billion last year.
So why isn’t Trump getting popularity points?
“Budgets are arcane things that are quite obscure to the average American,” Brunjes said.
And remember, he said, what Washington gets back is not all that much more than the payments it makes.
“A return of one percent is probably not enough to change people’s political preferences,” he said.
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