Homeland Security: The New Conduit for Federal Funding for States

Chester gives the MDW a lot of grief for all the federal funding North Dakota receives. It turns out CNBC provided a list today of the states that receive the most federal funding, ranked per capita. North Dakota does NOT even make the top five! I was sure, based on all the comments sent to me by Chester, North Dakota would be number one. It's not. Doesn't even make the top 5. Smile.

Turns out North Dakota is #7.

Number 4 is the president's home state: Hawaii.

Number 5 is the home of major Pentagon contractors: Virginia.

Number 1 is home of a lot of northeast US snowbirds: Florida. It’s similar to second-place Louisiana in that one of the 10 prime awards it received went to the Health and Human Services, and the rest to Homeland Security. In case you missed that, nine of the ten prime awards went to Homeland Security.

Number 2 is Louisiana but Louisiana seems to be an out-lier. Remove Louisiana from the list and North Dakota will rise a notch. Louisiana is number 2 because ... Of the top 10 prime awards that it received, one went to the Health and Human Services and the rest to Homeland Security. But of note: not only was it number 2 based on per capita federal spending but it was number five in overall spending.

And number 3 is South Carolina. That's surprising. Why would that be? Let's look: As with Delaware and Hawaii, all of the top 10 prime awards went to Homeland Security. Back to Hawaii: In fiscal year 2011 all of the top 10 prime awards allocated to Hawaii went to Homeland Security. This federal agency received a total of $12.4 billion, more than half of the entire amount of federal dollars given to the state. Of the major agencies receiving prime awards, the Social Security Administration came in a very distant second place to DHS. Its award of $3.2 billion was just over a quarter of what DHS received.

Maybe I'm misreading this, but I was quite surprised that Homeland Security is the new conduit for federal monies. Amazing. At $8 billion or so from the Federal government, North Dakota's share is paltry compared to the rest.

Another inconvenient truth. North Dakota residents can feel a bit less guilty about all the federal monies they receive.

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By the way, this is not idle chatter. Cottage industries have grown up around the country helping state governments tap into federal funding. At universities, an important skill set is knowing how to procure federal funding.