Regarding post #45, I have to ask Slowhandluke the same thing I asked you: What can the Congress legally give to a State’s Governor such that the Governor is fine with giving up billions upon billions of dollars of State power? “How does a nice three hundred million dollar bridge to nowhere grab ya’? You won’t be in charge of overseeing that, of course. And it’s the Congressional representatives from your State that will get the lions share of the credit for ‘bringing home the bacon’. But surely won’t squawk if the State you’re empowered to govern gives up a few measly billion dollars in exchange for that three hundred million dollar pork project. Right?”
The billions don’t go up in smoke (entirely.) They come back through all kinds of payments to individuals and agencies. Seeing it up to the feds in one bundle will be even easier to justify as a good “investment” when they total up all the payouts to individuals and agencies in the state. It just saves them the trouble of calculating the outflow, which every state gov does anyway. They know the net now. The “return” on the “investment”, of course, will be the ponzied deficit, minus direct federal expenses on overseas defense and foreign aid, just like it’s done now.