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 Between the 2009 and 2013 fiscal years, funding for a wide swath
of discretionary grant programs, from Head Start preschool education
to anti drug initiatives, fell by an average of 40 percent in
Republican-leaning states like Texas and Mississippi.
By contrast, funding to Democratic-leaning states such as California
and politically competitive swing states like Ohio dropped by 25
percent.
Though Congress sets overall spending levels, the Obama
administration determines where much of that money ends up.
Lawmakers also have curtailed their ability to direct money to their
home states when they adopted a ban on spending in 2011 known as
"earmarks."
That has given administration officials more power to steer money to
places that might return the favor with votes, said John Hudak, an
expert on federal spending at the centrist Brookings Institution who
worked with Reuters on the analysis.
"In the context of the Obama administration, swing states and blue
states are doing better than red states," said Hudak, who uncovered
similar spending patterns by previous presidents in his book
"Presidential Pork."
 "I would suggest these numbers would tell us there is politicization
going on," he said.
For the analysis, Reuters divided the U.S. into three categories:
Republican-leaning "red" states where Obama got less than 45 percent
of the vote in the 2012 election; competitive "purple" states where
he won between 45 percent and 55 percent of the vote; and
Democratic-leaning "blue" states where he won more than 55 percent
of the vote.
Red, purple and blue states have all shouldered steep spending cuts
after a 2011 budget deal, the analysis found. But those cuts have
not been doled out evenly.
Discretionary grant funding to red states like Mississippi fell by
40 percent to $15 billion between fiscal 2009 and fiscal 2013, the
most recent year for which reliable figures are available. Purple
states like Ohio and North Carolina saw a smaller drop of 27
percent, to $19.8 billion, and blue states saw a yet-smaller drop of
22.5 percent, to $27.6 billion. (The tally does not include disaster
aid handed out after Hurricane Sandy, which went largely to blue
states like New Jersey.)
The disparity doesn't show up in payments like Medicaid that are
distributed through pre-set formulas. It also does not appear in
Obama's 2009 recession-fighting Recovery Act. It only shows up in
federal aid that is most directly controlled by the administration:
"project grants," which are doled out on a competitive basis by
career civil servants and political appointees.
Of course, many factors other than politics come into play. Some
states aren't good at writing grant proposals - researchers at the
University of Nevada Las Vegas, for example, found that poor
planning has hurt that state's ability to compete for federal
dollars. A governor from an oil-producing state may be less inclined
to pursue green-energy grants.
But the disparity can't be fully explained by these factors. At
Reuters' request, Hudak ran a statistical analysis of spending over
this period, controlling for differences in population, economy,
percentage of elderly residents, miles of federal highway and the
number of research universities and hospitals.
 Red states still came up short. After 2011, the average red state
got 15 percent fewer grants and 1.3 percent fewer grant dollars than
the average swing state. That comes out to roughly 500 grants and
$15 million for an average-sized red state like Tennessee - enough
to pay for 115 additional police officers or upgrade a rural airport
to handle larger planes.
PLAYING POLITICS
Veterans of both Democratic and Republican administrations say
privately that politics often come into play with such grants. Money
to help upgrade a train depot may not boost a president's approval
rating in a state where he is deeply unpopular, but it might make a
difference in a competitive state like Colorado.
This approach isn't unique to Obama. Under presidents Bill Clinton
and George W. Bush, Hudak found that purple states got about 7.3
percent more grants and 5.7 percent more grant dollars than states
that were firmly in one camp.
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The Obama administration did not explain why Republican-leaning
states have borne the steepest budget cuts, and several Democratic
lawmakers declined to comment.
"The administration supports allocating federal grants based on
objecting criteria that will help protect taxpayer dollars and
ensure that lawmakers are responsible and accountable to the
American people," the White House Office of Management and Budget
said in a statement to Reuters.
Project grants, which totaled $74 billion in the fiscal year ending
September 2013, help pay for everything from homeless assistance to
agricultural research. But they are also a good publicity tool for a
president looking to show voters how he's making a difference in
their communities.
As Obama ran for re-election in 2012, administration officials
traveled to battleground states to announce good news: $45 million
for a manufacturing research center in Ohio; $8.2 million for a tech
incubator in Gainesville, Florida; $18 million to extend a rail
system in Charlotte, North Carolina. Each generated favorable
coverage in local news outlets.
Those announcements were less common in states where Obama had no
hope of winning over his Republican rival Mitt Romney.
Ohio, a key battleground state, won 10,232 grants in the fiscal year
that ended in September 2012, just before the election - an increase
of 21 percent over fiscal 2009. Ruby-red Texas saw the number of
grants it was awarded over that period drop by 37 percent, to
10,775, according to Reuters figures.
In dollar terms, according to Reuters data, the difference was just
as dramatic. Grant money for Texas dropped 43 percent, to $4.0
billion, over that time period. Dollars to Ohio declined 16.5
percent, to $2.0 billion.
EARMARK NOSTALGIA
The big problem for lawmakers? They lost their ability to influence
the flow of that money. Before the earmark ban, states with elected
officials who oversee spending on the Senate Appropriations
Committee got about 7.6 percent more grant dollars than other
states, Hudak found. After the 2011 earmark ban, evidence of clout
disappeared.
Republican Representative John Culberson used to insert earmarks
into spending bills to steer medical research and other projects to
his Houston-area district. Since the ban took effect, he says he's
had trouble getting the administration to pay for border control,
harbor dredging and even send aid to mop up after a chemical plant
explosion.
"The Obama administration approaches the federal government the same
way the Chicago machine politicians approach the Chicago public
treasury: it's to be used for their own benefit," he said.
Some Republicans worry they've handed too much control to the
administration. But Congress, under the watch of Republican House
Speaker John Boehner, isn't likely to lift the earmark ban any time
soon.
"Speaker Boehner is proud of the reforms we have put in place,"
spokesman Michael Steel said, "and believes more should be done to
ensure that Washington makes responsible decisions about taxpayers'
money."
(Reporting by Andy Sullivan)
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
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