Louise Radonsky of the Wall Street Journal had a good piece today on the disparities in stimulus spending between states:

Nevada, where unemployment stood at about 10% when the plan was passed, is getting $541 for each resident from the stimulus money allocated so far, a Wall Street Journal analysis found. Wyoming, where the 3.9% jobless rate was the lowest in the country in February, is getting $1,074 per person.

Florida, North Carolina and Oregon are among the other states with relatively low per-capita payouts, despite battling double-digit unemployment. North Dakota and South Dakota, meanwhile, are also receiving large quantities of stimulus money relative to their small populations — even while unemployment remains about half the national average.

This info is taken from the $198 billion of the $787 billion already spent from the stimulus bill. I don’t think it suggests anything nefarious or even incompetent on the part of the Obama administration — they tried to pass a bill as quickly as possible and in so doing used pre-existing funding formulas. What it does show is that federal funding formulas for state social services are structurally biased toward the most sparsely populated states like Wyoming, Alaska and the Dakotas. Ironically, these are also the states whose political leaders often profess staunch opposition to federal spending.-MB

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