The bad news is that our investment in the federal government continues in a bear market. In many categories, Arizona is a net donor state in terms of tax dollars. This means the amount of money paid to Washington does not equal the benefit we receive in return. For example, every dollar in gasoline tax paid to the feds only results in 90 cents returned to Arizona. The rest goes to build a train museum in West Virginia, the world's most expensive transit system in Boston and scores of other local projects around the country.
Education is another prime example of where our taxes are siphoned off.
Many education-funding formulas in federal law say that states receive money based in large part on the number of students served. It says that no state's funding will ever go down. Therefore, an eastern rust-belt state can have a flat or declining population while Arizona's booming communities get shortchanged. To a large degree, this is due to the lack of a defined Arizona agenda. Not since the days of Sens. Carl Hayden and Barry Goldwater and Reps.