TOPLINE: In the Pelosi Payoff to Progressives, Democrats created a new funding formula to reward liberal governors and mayors who kept their states and cities locked down with financial aid.
Unreasonable Funding for Liberal Governors and Mayors
Under President Trump, the previous bipartisan COVID-19 packages allocated funding to states based on population.
However, in their partisan $1.9 trillion far-left wish list, Democrats changed that formula by adding unemployment as a factor and boosted support to liberal states.
This is because Democrat-run states have the highest unemployment rates! In fact, the six states with unemployment rates over 8 percent are all run by liberal governors.
Democrats are bailing out their allies who made bad and unreasonable policy decisions during the pandemic, kept businesses shut down, and harmed their own economies.
Republican governors made the right decisions to respond to the pandemic and get their economies back on track. The unemployment data demonstrates that.
California and New York are the biggest winners and gain billions of dollars under this new skewed formula. In New York, the unemployment rate is 8.8 percent, and in California, the unemployment rate is 9 percent. However, this formula cuts funding for states like Florida, where the unemployment rate is 4.8 percent, and Utah, where the unemployment rate is 3.1 percent.
The chart below illustrates how much each state is expected to gain or lose from adding unemployment as a factor instead of basing allocations purely on the share of the U.S. population.
(in millions of dollars)
State allocation if based purely on population
Under Democrats’ Funding Formula State Loss/Gain
Percent Change
Georgia
$5,464
- $1,309
23.96% Decrease
Florida
$11,052
- $1,321
11.95% Decrease
Virginia
$4,392
- $1,126
25.64% Decrease
South Carolina
$2,650
- $1,054
39.77% Decrease
Alabama
$2,523
- $903
35.79% Decrease
Indiana
$3,464
- $904
26.10% Decrease
Ohio
$6,015
- $877
14.58% Decrease
Missouri
$3,158
- $842
26.66% Decrease
Minnesota
$2,902
- $825
28.43% Decrease
Iowa
$1,624
- $745
45.87% Decrease
Utah
$1,650
- $633
38.36% Decrease
North Carolina
$5,397
- $621
11.51% Decrease
Nebraska
$995
- $520
52.26% Decrease
Kansas
$1,499
- $413
27.55% Decrease
Arkansas
$1,553
- $403
29.43% Decrease
Oklahoma
$2,036
- $362
17.78% Decrease
Kentucky
$2,299
- $358
15.57% Decrease
Wisconsin
$2,996
- $290
9.68% Decrease
New Hampshire
$700
- $241
34.43% Decrease
Idaho
$920
- $231
25.11% Decrease
Mississippi
$1,532
- $227
14.82% Decrease
Tennessee
$3,514
- $194
5.52% Decrease
West Virginia
$922
- $173
18.76% Decrease
Washington
$3,919
- $166
4.24% Decrease
Maine
$692
- $163
23.55% Decrease
Montana
$550
- $140
25.45% Decrease
Delaware
$501
- $88
17.56% Decrease
Oregon
$2,170
- $62
2.86% Decrease
Michigan
$5,139
$15
0.29% Increase
South Dakota
$455
$23
5.05% Increase
New Mexico
$1,079
$40
3.71% Increase
Rhode Island
$545
$79
14.50% Increase
North Dakota
$392
$119
30.36% Increase
Alaska
$376
$143
38.03% Increase
Pennsylvania
$6,588
$206
3.13% Increase
Vermont
$321
$231
71.96% Increase
Maryland
$3,111
$259
8.33% Increase
Wyoming
$298
$277
92.95% Increase
Connecticut
$1,835
$313
17.06% Increase
Louisiana
$2,392
$317
13.25% Increase
Hawaii
$729
$404
55.42% Increase
Massachusetts
$3,547
$466
13.14% Increase
Colorado
$2,963
$490
16.54% Increase
Illinois
$6,521
$471
7.53% Increase
Arizona
$3,746
$554
14.79% Increase
Nevada
$1,585
$862
54.38% Increase
Texas
$14,921
$1,276
8.55% Increase
New Jersey
$4,571
$1,363
29.82% Increase
New York
$10,011
$2,058
20.56% Increase
California
$20,333
$5,232
25.73% Increase
Georgia, which was one of the first states in the country to re-open during the pandemic, is set to lose over $1.3 billion in pandemic relief because it has an unemployment rate of 5.4 percent. If Georgia stayed locked down like Hawaii, which has an unemployment rate of 10.2 percent, it could have received hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government. Under Democrats' blue state bailout, Hawaii will receive an additional $404 million under the new formula.
While certain red states in the chart above appear to "benefit" by factoring in unemployment, this is misleading. Democrat-led cities are receiving disproportionately more money than rural counties in these states.
Nationwide, these are the top five cities receiving funding:
$4.3 billion for New York City
$1.9 billion for Chicago
$1.3 billion for Los Angeles
$1.1 billion for Philadelphia
$880 million for Detroit
Of the 22 states that will receive additional money from the federal government, over 60 percent of the states are run by Democrats.
This formula overwhelmingly favors Pelosi’s and Schumer’s liberal allies who favored lockdowns instead of supporting families, workers, and small businesses.
Hawaii, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, and California all received massive increases from Pelosi's modified formula while the vast majority of states who had their funds reduced were red states.
And if that wasn’t enough, Democrats actually ban states from cutting taxes in this bill by dictating that states can’t change their tax laws if they accept their share of funding.
BOTTOM LINE: Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer do not care about representing ALL Americans. They are twisting the rules to bail out their socialist allies at the expense of struggling families, workers, and small businesses.
