Politics: Democratic Stimulus Haul is Almost Double Republicans

by Veronique de Rugy

Yesterday The Hill reported that Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that “keeping a Democratic majority in the House is ‘too important to the country,’” which is why “she had no intention of ceding control of the House in this fall’s elections, despite Republican optimism that they can win control of the chamber.” Appearing on PBS, Pelosi addressed potential Democratic losses due to Sunday’s health care vote, “I’ve said if passing this bill means I have to walk out of my office that night, it would be with the greatest pride.” However, she cautioned, “I haven’t any intention of losing the Democratic majority.”

Sure. Here is another reason Mrs. Pelosi might want to keep a democratic majority. That’s because, as it turns out, based on my new analysis of the Recovery.org data, Democratic districts are getting 1.8 times more money on average than Republican districts. Using Recovery.gov data, and cleaning it up seriously to be able to use it, we find that Republican districts are getting on average $260.6 million in stimulus awards while democratic districts are getting on average $471.5 million. The average is award per district is $385.9 million.

Interestingly, my data also confirms that the stimulus funds are not allocated based on unemployment rates or even variations in unemployment rates. So basically, if the administration believes that government spending can create jobs, the allocation of the funds doesn’t show it.

While I'm sure that there's plenty of pork going around, I'm a bit underwhelmed by the reporting (or the study, I'm not sure which). Either the reporter hasn't been very clear, or the study didn't investigate and compare the spending on a population basis.

Denser population areas skew democratic, so I'm left wondering here how the spending per capita shakes out.

As to the second, I think the last part of the OP is more relevant.

...the stimulus funds are not allocated based on unemployment rates or even variations in unemployment rates. So basically, if the administration believes that government spending can create jobs, the allocation of the funds doesn’t show it.

De Rugy knows full well that stimulus funds were never supposed to be allocated based on local unemployment rates and that her conclusion doesn't remotely flow from the "data" she provides. It was a stimulus bill, not a jobs bill. The point was to stimulate aggregate demand in the economy as a whole, not provide some temporary jobs in specific places.

Theoretically all congressional house districts should have equal or reasonably close to equal population, at least at the time the lines where drawn. So the per capita arguement kinda goes away.

The study does not control for at least one other variable that is overwhelmingly important in determining the dispensation of stimulus funds. The variable in question is in fact pretty obvious if you simply look at the districts that have received the largest amount of stimulus money, according to de Rugy's dataset.

The district that received the largest amount of stimulus funding in the 4th Quarter of 2009, according to de Rugy's tally, is California's 5th Congressional District. Is there anything notable about the 5th Congressional? Well, it is home to the state capital, Sacramento....Next on the list is New York's 21st Congressional District. The largest city in the 21st is the state capital of New York, Albany. Third is the 21st Congressional District of Texas. It contains parts of Texas' state capital, the wonderful city of Austin. (Another district that contains parts of Austin -- the 25th -- ranks 14th on de Rugy's list.)

...etc...

This, of course, makes perfect sense. A lot of stimulus funds are distributed to state agencies, which are then responsible for allocating and administering the funds to the presumed benefit of citizens throughout the state. These state agencies, of course, are usually located in or near the state capital. In fact, the differences are pretty overwhelming....On a per-district basis, the districts with state capitals received 11 times more funding.

...The other piece of the puzzle, of course, is that state capitals are much more likely to elect Democrats to Congress for a variety of reasons. They are, by definition, urban (although some smaller state capitals like Montpelier stretch the definition). They are, by definition, home to large numbers of governmental employees, who may be more sympathetic to bigger government. They tend to be highly educated and often are home to large state universities.

That de Rugy has testified before Congress on the basis of her evidence, and never paused to consider why the top five congressional districts on her list overlap with Sacramento, Albany, Austin, Tallahassee and Harrisburg, is mind-boggling. The presence of a state capital is the overwhelmingly dominant factor it predicting the dispensation of stimulus funds.

So, wait. "highly educated" = "elects Democrats to Congress"? ...And for a party whose supporters are known to include a significant majority of urban poor and unionized blue collar types, both of which would seem to pull the "educated" average down