Krugman's state problem

To fund the big three needs an agreement from about 30 senators that their states gets an insignificant slice of the pie. We cannot get that vote from the senate unless they get more than their share.

The House observes the disequilibrium in state handouts and responds with a flurry of individual handouts to make the difference.

Trying to call the problem an issue with the two party system fails. Krugman is Tilting at Windmills.

Nancy's plan:

Democrats think there are many Republicans who will support legislation to provide more state and local federal aid. And Trump has tweeted his support for providing additional money for state and local governments that have suffered economic losses due to the coronavirus.

Pelosi said Democrats are writing a new spending bill that will include worker protections, “pension support,” additional unemployment insurance, and healthcare funding, among other things. The measure would also provide a $25 billion bailout of the U.S. Postal Service's debt, she said.

She intends to pick off enough middle states to out number the small. But look at the distribution. She needs to pick off another 20 mid sized states, but they are not there, the skew is tilted toward the massively large. Coming from the House, the results will be a sudden rush for earmarks in the bill.  The Senate will need about 20 significant earmarks for the various small states, and they are much larger than usual. The smaller states cannot come up with any one single earmark that fits, except cash.   She is stuck, there is no real distribution that favors the large cities in large states.

The solution that makes sense is to dole the cash out in an individual basis and let the states tax it back as needed. But we can see that puts the large states in political turmoil.  Nancy is up against a long, difficult negotiation, a negotiation so long the wait in the large states makes matters much worse, essentially we end up pushing the disequi8librium back to large states anyway.