Imagine that: McConnell is calling additional federal funding for states suffering under the pandemic lockdown and Trump’s breathtakingly inept handling of the crisis a “Blue State Bailout.”

It’s a theme that supposed “frontier Americans” like to tout, along with their self-reliance and pull-up-their-bootstraps attitudes. Just look at those city folks—especially the Black ones—all relying on government largess. Who can trust those tax-and-spend Democrats anyway? So you get bullshit comments like this:

x States should always plan for a rainy day just like any business. I disagree that states should take Fed money or be bailed out. This will lead to taxpayers paying for mismanagement of poorly run states. States need to tighten up, make some cuts, and manage. — Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) April 23, 2020

There is no rainy day fund that would prepare any state for a catastrophe of this magnitude. Is Haley saying that she’s happy to skip receipt of any federal money? Because of course that’s not happening.

But it’s worse than that: South Carolina would not exist in its current form without the largess of the federal budget. According to analysis by the Rockefeller Institute of Government at the State University of New York, South Carolina got backed $1.73 billion in 2017, and $1.61 billion in 2018. That’s quite the return. And who is carrying South Carolina’s dead weight?

Net $ sent to Feds Return on $1 sent to feds New York $22 billion $0.90 New Jersey $11.5B $0.91 Massachusetts $9.1B $0.90 Connecticut $8.1B $0.84 Colorado $1.6B $0.97 Minnesota $725 million $0.99

How much extra did South Carolina pull in? $23 billion. So it’s not just those blue states— you can pretty much say that New York bailed out the Palmetto State.

And keep in mind, these numbers are exaggerated by the Trump trillion-dollar deficit, in which tax cuts for the rich meant that billionaire New Yorkers and Californians pay less in taxes. (If you want to see for yourself, here’s the data for 2017, pre-tax cuts.)

Kentucky is extra special, though. If you wonder why McConnell survives reelection every year despite deep personal unpopularity, it’s because Kentucky is the single biggest bailed out state in the entire country.

In 2017, it received a whopping $40.8 billion more than it paid in federal taxes, or a rate of return of $2.35 for every dollar spent. In 2018, it was an even bigger $45 billion, or $2.41 for every dollar sent to Washington.

No state is bailed out the way Kentucky is. It is a black hole of federal resources—a deficit-creation machine.

(The only other states that come close in federal largess are Virginia and Maryland, because of federal government infrastructure like the Pentagon, the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.)

Now McConnell, of all people, is going to walk around talking about “bailing out” blue states, when it is those blue states that make Kentucky possible?

Haley is going to complain about bailing out blue states while her state sucks in tens of billions of dollars generated by blue states?

It is clear that conservatives only see blue America as a foil for their bigotries and a source of revenue for states run so poorly that they can’t compete economically with the Californias, Massachusetts, New Jerseys, and New Yorks of America. They lag in education. They lack in health and fitness and diet. They lag in clean air and water.

And through it all blue states have gamely carried that burden, because it’s what liberals do—we help people. But is there gratitude, respect, empathy for the extra weight blue Americans have to shoulder? Of course not. There’s nothing but contempt and the use of undemocratic institutions (like the Senate and the Electoral College) and techniques (like voter suppression) to maintain their lock on power.

That way, McConnell can continue wailing about the federal deficit and those boogeyman blue states, while his state and those of his pals continue to suck blue America dry.

Remember, the seeds are planted. Either Republicans start acting like this is a United States of America, or the seeds of a national breakup will continue to germinate. Because this status quo? It can’t and won’t continue.