jim wrote:
> Well you wouldn't want to give up that yearly stipend that Alaska sends to
> all of it's residents each year would you?
> Jim
That's not all Alaskan residents get:
The Wall Street Journal
Alaska and You
August 14, 2006; Page A8
Later this year every resident of Alaska will get a check in the mail
for roughly $1,000 -- or $4,000 for a family of four -- simply for
living in the state. In some years the annual payment has been nearly
$8,000 per family. The money for these bonuses comes from the interest
earned on what is now a $35 billion oil-revenue investment fund that
Alaska has amassed since the late 1970s. While $75 oil is pinching
pocketbooks in the lower 48 states, for the 640,000 residents of Alaska
the cost of energy has been a gift. Some 85% of the revenue the state
collects comes from oil severance taxes -- a levy applied to the 850,000
daily gallons of North Slope oil that travels via pipelines such as BP's
to the rest of the nation. As a result, Alaska is only one of nine
states without a state income tax, and one of only two (along with New
Hampshire) with no income or statewide sales tax. Alaska is the only
state that can fund government services by exporting its tax burden via
energy taxes to the other states.
And here's the political rub: Alaska is also the largest state recipient
of federal spending earmarks. The Tax Foundation says Alaskans receive
nearly $2 of income transfer from the taxpayers of the other 49 states
for every $1 they pay in taxes each year. Ron Utt of the Heritage
Foundation calculates that Alaska gets $5 of federal highway spending
for every $1 in gas tax money it pays to the federal trust fund -- twice
as much back as any other state. We all know about Alaska's $230 million
Bridge to Nowhere -- a federally funded highway project that will
connect the town of Ketchikan (pop. 9,000) to a tiny island with a
population of 50. But this white elephant is no anomaly. Year after year
the 49th state manages to secure federal dollars for skating rinks, sea
otter recovery grants, berry research, the Arctic winter games,
native-Alaskan museums and miles upon miles of roads through deserted
areas of the state.
The reason: The state's Congressional Members have so much seniority
that they sit on the thrones of the most powerful spending committees.
The state's lone House member, Don Young, is chairman of the
Transportation Committee and was once quoted in the New York Times as
saying he'd "like to be a little oinker myself," referring to
pork-barrel spending. Alaska Senator Ted Stevens is the number two
Republican (and former chairman) on the Appropriations Committee, the
Grand Central Station of earmarks.
(snip)
Messrs. Stevens and Young maintain that the local projects they fund are
of the highest value to the public. Perhaps so, though our Alaska
contacts tell us that even local residents are embarrassed by all the
pork in their backyard. The best way to sort out which bridges, museums
and research grants are worthy, and which are a waste, is to stop the
earmarking and require the residents of this rich state -- and others --
to fund this stuff themselves.
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115550985628634607.html (subscription)
|