Say Anything Blog

Ugh...

North Dakota received $6 billion of the $2.2 trillion the federal government distributed nationally in 2004, an increase of 5.4 percent from 2003.

“What is most impressive is the diversity of federal money coming into the state,” says Richard Rathge, director of the State Data Center at North Dakota State University. “For example, a fourth of the money comes in the form of grants encompassing nearly 450 different programs.”

This month's “Population Bulletin,” a monthly publication from the North Dakota State Data Center, focuses on federal expenditure data obtained from the 2004 “Consolidated Federal Funds Report” (CFFR). During the mid- to late 1990s, federal dollars flowing into North Dakota showed little variation, averaging approximately $4 billion per year. Between 1999 and 2002, federal expenditures to North Dakota significantly increased 12.4 percent per year on average. Federal expenditures decreased 11 percent between 2002 and 2003, and then increased 5.4 percent in 2004.

A sizeable proportion of the increase in 2004 can be attributed to a 26.4 percent increase in procurement contract dollars (governmental purchases and contractual outlays). In 2004, 8.3 percent of all federal funds entering North Dakota were procurement contracts ($503 million), up from 6.9 percent in 2003 ($398 million).

When I hear people talk about increasing the amount of federal money North Dakota gets as though it were a good thing it kind of, well...it kind of makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit.

Increases in government spending are almost never a good thing, and bragging about $2 billion in additional spending is like bragging about the amount of your welfare check going up. We shouldn't be looking for ways to get more money from the federal government, we should be looking for ways to make our state less dependent on that money.

If the state needs an additional $2 billion from the federal government (the $6 billion North Dakota got, by the way, works out to be over $9,000 for ever man, woman and child living in the state) then something has gone wrong that needs to be fixed. Sadly, though, not many North Dakotans share my perspective on this. Far too many of them see the federal government as some sort of cash machine and our elected federal representatives as people who are skilled at working it.

But that just isn't the way it should be. Our elected leaders should be finding ways to empower North Dakotans so that they can live and work without having to worry about how much that "cash machine" in Washington is going to spit out from year to year.