The fraud hysteria is a distraction from who’s actually cashing the checks
If so many blue states are soooo full of fraud and taxpayer waste – JFC – what does that say about how badly red states are really doing economically?
The fact is that blue states could commit billions in fraud and still use less federal funding than red states.
Sit with that for a second.
California sent $275.6 billion more to the federal government than it got back in 2024. New York kicked in $76.5 billion net. Meanwhile, Alabama took $44.7 billion more than it contributed. South Carolina grabbed $38.9 billion. Virginia pulled in $89 billion more than it paid.
So when Trump freezes funding to Minnesota over fraud allegations and demands receipts for every federal dollar since inauguration day, ask yourself: where’s the letter to Mississippi? Where’s the USDA investigation into West Virginia? Where’s the 2,000 federal agents deployed to audit Alabama’s Medicaid spending?
They don’t exist. Because this was never about fraud.
Red states receive $1.24 for every dollar they send to Washington. Blue states get $1.14. Seven of the ten most federally dependent states vote Republican.
According to Time Magazine’s five-year analysis, blue states contributed nearly 60 percent of federal tax receipts but only received 53 percent back. Red states paid 40 percent and collected 47 percent. That’s a trillion-dollar wealth transfer – from the states being accused of waste to the states cashing the checks.
Trump convinced half the country that immigrants, minorities, and welfare recipients are bankrupting America. Meanwhile, the actual math shows Democratic states subsidizing Republican ones to the tune of $4,300 per capita over five years.
The states with the highest child poverty rates? Red. The states refusing Medicaid expansion while their residents die uninsured? Red. Texas alone accounts for 40 percent of the national health coverage gap. But nobody’s sending ICE to Austin or freezing federal funds to Florida.
Look, Minnesota’s fraud was real. Aimee Bock – a white woman Trump has never mentioned – stole $250 million through a nonprofit called Feeding Our Future. She’s been convicted. The DOJ charged 78 people. The system worked. But instead of acknowledging that, Trump called Somali people “garbage,” sent thousands of agents to Minneapolis, and suspended funding to the entire state based on a YouTube video that state investigators found showed no evidence of fraud.
This is the trick: make people so angry about immigrants and welfare that they never notice who’s actually draining the system.
It’s not the Somali day care workers in Minneapolis. It’s not food stamps. It’s not Medicaid for poor families. It’s a tax code that lets billionaires pay 8 percent while nurses pay 13. It’s a new law that gives households making over $700,000 an extra $13,600 per year while families making under $15,000 face a 9 percent tax increase. It’s $3.8 trillion in tax cuts over ten years that go overwhelmingly to the richest Americans while Medicaid and food assistance get slashed to pay for it.
The top ten U.S. billionaires added $698 billion to their net worth this year. The states screaming loudest about welfare fraud are the ones most dependent on federal welfare. And the guy leading the charge against “waste and abuse” is a convicted fraudster who pardons other fraudsters.
Red states are so badly managed that blue states can allegedly commit billions in fraud and still come out ahead on the federal balance sheet. That’s not a gotcha about coastal elites. That’s an indictment of every Republican governor who spent the last decade refusing to expand healthcare, cutting education, and blaming brown people for the poverty their own policies created.
If you’re in a red state mad about your tax dollars going to immigrants and welfare queens, I have news: your tax dollars are coming FROM immigrants and welfare queens. California is paying for your roads. New York is funding your schools. The blue states you’ve been told are collapsing under fraud are the ones keeping your state out of bankruptcy.
Trump knows this. He’s counting on you not to.
The grift isn’t food stamps. It’s not Somali day cares. It’s not sanctuary cities or undocumented workers. The grift is convincing struggling people that other struggling people are the enemy while billionaires walk off with everything.
You got played. And you’re still defending the people who did it.
SOURCES
https://usafacts.org/articles/which-states-contribute-the-most-and-least-to-federal-revenue/
https://time.com/7222411/blue-states-are-bailing-out-red-states/
https://www.moneygeek.com/resources/states-most-reliant-on-federal-government/