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Thanks. It's hard to make objective comments about those numbers without knowing exactly how they come up with them. For example, in my home state of New Jersey the elected state officials are always complaining that we only get around $0.75 from Washington for every dollar that we pay in taxes -- which is a lot less than the numbers posted there.

I suspect a lot of this may be a function of how Social Security and Medicare relate to the numbers -- both in terms of taxes paid as well as benefits received. These numbers are misleading for densely populated states with high state taxes like New Jersey and Connecticut. These states have a lot of working-age people who pay Social Security and Medicare taxes, but Federal outlays to SS and Medicare recipients are probably very low because our retirees get chased away due to the high cost of living.