FYI, it's not just Democrats who are raising the issue of who pays for, and who benefits from state spending. The map above is being distributed by Rep. Glenn Anderson (R-Fall City), along with his own ranking of counties by expenditure/revenue ratio (PDF). And as you can see, of the six "donor" counties, only one, Kittitas, sits on the other side of the mountains.

Huh.

Curiously, if you compare the map above to say, a map of the 2008 gubernatorial election results by county, you'll notice some striking similarities:

Of the 12 counties in which Democratic Governor Christine Gregoire received a majority of the votes, eight of them rank amongst the top ten in terms of the ratio of revenues generated to benefits received. But of course, I don't think that's exactly the point Rep. Anderson is trying to make.

Rather, if Republicans are serious about making permanent and substantive cuts in the size and scope of state government, they better be prepared to shoulder this burden back at home. On average, residents of Washington's 33 recipient counties get back $1.40 in state benefits for every dollar they pay in state taxes (compared to $0.62 here in King County), and collectively consume 59.3 percent of state expenditures. Surely, Republicans can't make a mathematical or moral argument for increasing this disparity, can they? I mean, aren't they the ones who like to vilify the notion of redistribution of wealth?

So in the long term, it is hard to imagine how the kind of deep cuts Republicans say they want cannot help but disproportionately fall on their own districts, when it is these Republican districts that currently consume a disproportionate share of the state budget.