The American Revolution came about due to taxation without representation. Today, we have have taxation with under-representation. The Senate is dominated by red states since all states, regardless of population, receive two Senators. Meanwhile, red states complain about taxation while accepting Medicaid and other programs used by their poor, paid by blue states. West Virginia has a relatively old population, so 22% of its residents are on Medicare, versus 16.7% for the nation as a whole. It’s also a state that has benefited hugely from Obamacare, with the percentage of the population lacking health insurance falling from 14% in 2013 to 6% in 2015; these gains came mainly from a big expansion of Medicaid.
It’s true that the nation as a whole pays for these health care programs with taxes. But an older, poorer state like West Virginia receives much more than it pays in -- and it would have received virtually none of the tax cuts Trumpcare, if it passed, would have lavished on the wealthy. Republicans’ red-state bias may seem like just more of the same. After all, their last big legislative drive — the Senate health bill, Graham-Cassidy, which failed in September — also sought a major transfer of resources from blue states that had done a good job expanding health insurance to red states that hadn’t. Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky,
derided that bill as “petty politics” — “just taking the Obamacare money, keeping it and taking it from Democratic states and giving it to Republican states.”
Novelist Ayn Rand is cherished by Paul Ryan. As Ayn put it, under democracy “one’s work, one’s property, one’s mind, and one’s life are at the mercy of any gang that may muster the vote of a majority.” That gang is the Republican majority which legitimizes this exploitation; itself an engine of injustice.
So, the blue states, that have the smartest tax lawyers and accountants, are responding to the GOP's rushed law that was incompletely thought through. Had there been hearings and time spent going over details, they would have closed the loopholes. Now, blue states will figure out how to shield themselves, resulting is less revenue than anticipated.
