Kansas was an earmark donor state

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The practice of federal earmark spending was not kind to Kansas, as data shows Kansas was an earmark donor state.

Detail of stairway in Kansas Capitol.
Detail of stairway in Kansas Capitol.
The former practice of earmarking federal spending was seen as a way for members of Congress to demonstrate their political prowess by bringing the federal bacon back home to the district or state. Data gathered and analyzed by Brandon Arnold of Cato Institute shows that states differ greatly in the dollars sent to Washington as federal income taxes and the earmarks received.

Data for 2009, one of the last years for earmarking, along with Arnold’s calculations of a earmark ratio, shows that the value of this ratio varies from 25 percent to 1,104 percent. This ratio is calculated by first determining the proportion of total federal income taxes paid by a state. Use that to calculate the state’s proportional share of earmark dollars. Then, compare to earmarks actually received.

For 2009, the earmark ratio for Kansas was 81.9 percent. Based on the state contributing 0.9 percent of total federal taxes paid, Kansas should have received $173 million in earmarks. It actually received $142 million.

Arnold’s article contains other interesting find, such as comparing a state’s earmark ratio with it having members on appropriations committees.

I’ve presented Arnold’s data in an interactive spreadsheet. View the data below, or click here to open it in a new window, which may work best in most cases. This is a spreadsheet in Google Docs format. You may manipulate and save the data as your own copy.

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