Because a budget process that’s just “Blue states get nothing while providing the overriding share of national revenues” is not only a violation of fair play, it’s massively and structurally destabilizing to the country.
Replies
they are planning on never being out of power again, they are literally openly planning on arresting/killing/deporting any decent. dems need a better plan than just "vote in the midterms"
jul 21, 2025, 8:53 pm • 76 1 • view
We either get rid of them electorally, or we doing using other constitutional provisions. Exercising our rights to full effect, so to speak.
jul 22, 2025, 12:43 am • 0 0 • view
💯 we need full 50 million in the streets! People choosing to rise over choosing to go to their friend's house, or their game. There is sacrifice in everything.
jul 22, 2025, 10:40 am • 1 0 • view
It's Golden Parachute Logic. "I'll be gone by the time the bill comes due, so it's not my problem." They forget that they're doing this to the machine that makes the parachutes, and bails them out when their financial chicanery blows up in their face.
jul 21, 2025, 6:26 pm • 17 0 • view
They're literally setting fire to their own safety net while they crack open the support pillars to rummage for copper they can pawn off.
jul 21, 2025, 6:26 pm • 11 0 • view
Blue states should just stop funding the country. The citizens of blue states should stop paying federal income tax. Put it all in an covert escrow, maybe offshore somewhere the feds can't touch it. Then start making demands.
jul 22, 2025, 12:10 pm • 13 4 • view
This probably doesn't scale, and exposes people to prosecution for tax evasion. But I agree a political system in which Blue America subsidizes Red America, which periodically rebels, causing massive social harm, is badly broken and calls the ongoing subsidies into question.
jul 22, 2025, 12:29 pm • 15 0 • view
I don't think mass prosecution for tax evasion is doable, but since States collect your Fed taxes and then send them, putting that money in an escrow isn't evasion so much as leverage. Only liability would be to State leaders protecting the interest of *their* people. The Constitution is null now
jul 22, 2025, 12:44 pm • 9 2 • view
yeah, spcl when they've gutted the IRS and mistreated every principled accountant willing to do government work so severely they'll never take a job under a Republican admin again. Who are they going to investigate it with? Who will they enforce it with??
jul 22, 2025, 2:35 pm • 2 0 • view
The ICE goons aren't going to keep arresting people for free, neither will the military, and not enough of them anyway. There's only a few countries that *might* be willing to lend them money, the only likely one would be in the middle east and it wouldn't be sustainable.
jul 22, 2025, 3:34 pm • 2 0 • view
The liability would be further punishment from the federal government. Perhaps a daily fine funds are withheld or massive interest owed. Not too hard to see where this would go imo
jul 22, 2025, 1:14 pm • 0 0 • view
It's really more of a soft coup. They would fail miserably, there's no money for any of it. The blue states are the support of this country, mostly CA. I think the only red state not in the red, so to speak, is Texas. Then the dems take over and things get better. It's a tough love situation.
jul 22, 2025, 1:16 pm • 1 0 • view
Is the OBBB (as opposed to the ÖBB) going to wind up giving tax cuts to a bunch of blue staters while reducing flows into red states?
jul 21, 2025, 5:42 pm • 1 0 • view
I think you can just say Republicans aren’t “thinking” and leave it at that. It’s all emotional reaction. Some of it has been the stated goal for a long time but they haven’t thought moves down the line. They’re mad things changed. They want to go back. That’s it.
jul 21, 2025, 5:42 pm • 90 1 • view
There isn't even a there to go back to. Their prelapsarian world never existed.
jul 21, 2025, 5:48 pm • 41 0 • view
They are betting that the blue state Dems are a bunch of cowards who will never stand up to them. I hope they are wrong, but have seen nothing to fuel that hope.
jul 21, 2025, 6:02 pm • 34 1 • view
The establishment Dems have worked very hard at not being taken seriously.
jul 21, 2025, 6:08 pm • 19 0 • view
It's why red states have low taxes, because they get subsidies from the fed. It's all a scam.
jul 21, 2025, 5:57 pm • 23 2 • view
The longer it goes on the more likely the backlash from blue states is ugly and brutal. Republicans are playing with fire and are endlessly fortunate that the Democratic party is full of spineless weasels. That can change.
jul 21, 2025, 6:52 pm • 70 3 • view
This... after GOP spent 4yrs voting against the legislation Dems engineered to overwhelmingly benefit rural🇺🇸... (thats also more fiscally responsible & beneficial long-term) The dichotomy between the two parties in governance & adherence to law, in politics & in media coverage is astounding...
jul 21, 2025, 6:23 pm • 9 1 • view
It is a fiscal civil war
jul 22, 2025, 1:58 am • 2 0 • view
It really will come down to blue states withholding federal dollars if we are being required to subsidize an autocratic plutocracy. Why on earth would we send dollars we could use within our states if the federal govt witholds from us.
jul 21, 2025, 10:52 pm • 9 0 • view
How would you have the states prevent the federal government from collecting personal income tax?
jul 22, 2025, 10:43 am • 0 0 • view
That is the conundrum. But it is something blue states should be exploring if the federal government is disadvantaging and worse, acting punitively toward them.
jul 22, 2025, 1:44 pm • 0 0 • view
This is why blue states are doing this: www.nbcnews.com/politics/pol...
jul 21, 2025, 10:18 pm • 0 1 • view
So the west and NE coasts should resist, maybe form new allegiances and trade agreements, and not share their commerce, tax revenue, workforce, or patents.
jul 21, 2025, 7:30 pm • 1 1 • view
We would lose the war that would inevitably lead to. I don't think that's the solution to this problem.
jul 21, 2025, 8:00 pm • 1 0 • view
No, we wouldnt. Because they literally cant win. We have the money. We also have all the ports they need to get shit. So you devastate us, its just shooting yourself in the dick. And if seize us, you just lost your golden goose.
jul 22, 2025, 2:42 am • 0 0 • view
They have the entire US military and law enforcement and I'm sure right wing paramilitary groups would join them. These people don't care about fucking themselves over, they are fascists and all fascists are morons.
jul 22, 2025, 4:14 pm • 0 0 • view
Uh huh. Can said fanatics produce what we produce? No. They gonna work the ports? No. Every avenue of force leads nowhere. They take over. Still gotta run it, and you cant enslave creativity. You can make it captive, but you cant replicate the output freedom allows for in a zoo
jul 22, 2025, 4:38 pm • 0 0 • view
They don't think any of that is true and they believe that California is economically harming them. You need to remember that these people are divorced from reality and incredibly cruel. They don't care. They don't even know that they should.
jul 22, 2025, 4:46 pm • 0 0 • view
Barbarians at the gate. Got it. You needn't say more. You have already proven the uselessness of what you could offer.
jul 22, 2025, 5:59 pm • 0 0 • view
and, maybe unsurprisingly, it’s very much straight out of the socialist redistribution of resources playbook they claim to be morally opposed to
jul 21, 2025, 8:11 pm • 4 0 • view
Yup, it’s taxation without representation, a thing our entire political system was ostensibly designed to prevent.
jul 21, 2025, 6:30 pm • 22 1 • view
I believe this. CA & NY could threaten blockade of Federal taxes collected in their states. A real tea party. TX & FL would immediately object to picking up the tab for “Red” free-loader states. They love their Blue-state supported welfare. #NoTaxationWithoutRepresentation #CREAM
jul 21, 2025, 6:52 pm • 10 1 • view
How? Taxes are garnished from your wages and sent directly to the federal government. It's not like the money funnels into Sacremento or Albany and they write a check to the government. You would need every business, small to large, to agree to not garnish federal income tax, and even then that is
jul 22, 2025, 12:00 pm • 0 0 • view
nearly impossible because most use a third party for their payroll management and the flow of taxes is baked into the platforms. The only thing a state can do is withhold state employee federal taxes but in a place like NY or CA, that amount compared to the rest of the federal tax is insiginificant.
jul 22, 2025, 12:00 pm • 0 0 • view
It’s tough because the original rules are so embedded/locked in. BUT, you yourself recognize that a third party controls our garnishment, takes fed, state, local, SDI & health & 401k, if you cam afford it. That’s a mechanism that can be altered. With legal maneuvers?!
jul 22, 2025, 2:02 pm • 0 0 • view
We’re at a point where the Federal Admin is run by a Convicted Felon, who illegally found a way to keep our taxes & not give our tax portion back! He broke the rules by which we operated. While the lawsuits play out to get that money back, we should figure a way to starve this beast in DC!
jul 22, 2025, 2:02 pm • 0 0 • view
States aren't mechanically able to blockade federal tax collection; it doesn't involve any state actors.
jul 21, 2025, 7:08 pm • 6 0 • view
You structure your state taxes to be federally deductible, and increase them to make up for the services you aren't getting.
jul 21, 2025, 7:17 pm • 4 0 • view
Payroll instead of income taxes, for example.
jul 21, 2025, 7:23 pm • 0 0 • view
literally not possible without a ton of intermediate steps that are also very difficult. To the extent it is possible, it has already been done (see voluntary pass thru entity tax). it’s a nice idea, but does not put federal tax revenues in state control.
jul 21, 2025, 7:40 pm • 1 0 • view
The state repeals their income tax, and starts a payroll tax. Payroll taxes are business expenses, and 100% deductible, unlike the cap on state tax deductibility for individuals. And so on. Is there really a limit to what a state could do with this more broadly?
jul 21, 2025, 7:58 pm • 0 0 • view
That doesn't affect the requirement to do federal withholding on wages.
jul 21, 2025, 8:00 pm • 0 0 • view
Yeah, zero impact on that. There are ways states can interfere with federal tax collection, and directly interfering with wage withholding probably isn't it.
jul 21, 2025, 8:04 pm • 0 0 • view
Anyway step one would be “all payroll within the state has to go through a state depository institution, which then blocks outgoing funds to the federal government and seizes them into its own account.” Even laying the groundwork for such a depository would run into problems
jul 21, 2025, 7:40 pm • 6 0 • view
And the federal response would simply be "it's nice that you paid the state some money, but that doesn't actually satisfy your federal withholding obligations, pay up or we seize your assets and charge you with tax evasion", so....
jul 21, 2025, 7:43 pm • 1 0 • view
I’m not sure it would be at that specific point. The scale and problem of it would make that solution prohibitively difficult. But there is no “mandatory state depository institution for payroll,” nor could one readily be created, so the point is moot
jul 21, 2025, 7:45 pm • 2 0 • view
The other interesting question is, even assuming you could mandate using a state depository institution for payroll, where does it keep the money? It can't be in anything touching a federally-regulated account, or else the feds can just yoink it from there....
jul 21, 2025, 7:55 pm • 0 0 • view
Like, what would the mechanics even be?
jul 21, 2025, 7:55 pm • 0 0 • view
I mean, in this decidedly-implausible world, it's not that hard to run a report against tax collection data, find out who's missing, and do some exemplary seizures and prosecutions.
jul 21, 2025, 7:49 pm • 0 0 • view
You're not going to get everyone (but you don't get perfect compliance even in the status quo), but will you get enough to frustrate the state's attempts to withhold payroll? Probably. Not that it matters, given implausibility etc.
jul 21, 2025, 7:49 pm • 0 0 • view
You’re response is rational, of course… But right wingers propose irrational, extra-legal “solutions” all the time (c.f. “abortion finding”) and have all sorts of rules to show for it. Dems need more fight, more out-of-box thinking to starve the right wing beast.
jul 21, 2025, 7:59 pm • 3 0 • view
Hmm, that's an interesting approach, though I don't think it'd work well in practice: SALT is only deductible above the standard deduction, so for most people this would be a straightforward state tax increase that wouldn't be offset federally.
jul 21, 2025, 7:25 pm • 1 0 • view
For people with higher incomes, it's functionally equivalent to lending the state the additional money and getting it back later, so that might be unpopular for cash flow reasons, but it's at least average out in the end.
jul 21, 2025, 7:25 pm • 0 0 • view
that assumes you can structure in that way, within the existing limits, and that those limits won't change in response. Ultimately state recourse is limited unless they're willing to combat federal attempts at enforcement… a new Nullification Crisis.
jul 21, 2025, 7:26 pm • 3 0 • view
OTOH appropriation of federal accounts, property, and goods, while more confrontational upfront is less complicated and more targeted
jul 21, 2025, 7:34 pm • 6 0 • view
Won’t stop them from trying: www.nbcnews.com/politics/pol...
jul 21, 2025, 10:19 pm • 1 1 • view
heh 😼 www.nbcnews.com/politics/pol...
jul 21, 2025, 10:57 pm • 4 1 • view