National divorce would be 'devastating' for red states — here's why

A so-called "national divorce" would work out poorly for red states, which a new analysis shows depend heavily on blue states.

MSNBC economic analyst Steve Rattner presented data on "Morning Joe" showing that states won by Donald Trump contribute far less to the federal budget than states won by President Biden, which Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and some other Republicans said should be separated from one another.

"The Trump states, virtually every single state except for Utah, don't ask me why Utah, got back more from Washington than it paid," Rattner said. "So it would not really work very well to their advantage to leave. In fact, the top states for getting a better deal from Washington are Kentucky, Mississippi and West Virginia."

Higher state-level poverty rates correlate with support for Republican candidates, Rattner said, while Democratic-leaning states tend to have higher income.

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"You can see with your eye that the red states tend to be above the national average in poverty," Rattner said, while presenting a chart showing that correlation. "The blue states tend to be below the national average in poverty. Another way to look at it is if -- this is by counties but you get to the same place, on the right, how much of the [gross domestic product] is produced in these places -- red counties, 29 percent, blue counties, 71 percent. They're suffering more economically, and that does lead to the question of, how does that result in more money going to these states?"

Host Joe Scarborough was amazed by Rattner's finding that 71 percent of the GDP came from counties that voted for Biden in the 2020 election.

"This just underlines the fact that it would be devastating for there to be a divide, for those areas that voted for Donald Trump to want a, quote, you know, separation, a divorce from the United States," Scarborough said. "I mean, yeah, what do you think -- well, what other chart -- do you have any other charts we can move along to here?"

Poorer states pay less in federal taxes, Rattner said, and he presented additional charts that showed how much states got back in federal spending -- and those showed Trump states benefited disproportionally from the federal government and would suffer if they were cut off from that funding.

"They'd have huge economic deficits," Rattner said. "They wouldn't have money for their projects, they wouldn't have new bridges, they wouldn't have federal installations in their districts. They wouldn't have food stamps, they wouldn't have Medicaid to help cushion their residents against extreme poverty. It would be a really tough and stupid economic decision. Again, the whole irony of this is you've got Republicans who oppose kind of almost every kind of federal spending, who are the biggest beneficiaries of the federal spending that they oppose."

"Terrible idea for everybody in those red states," Rattner added.

Watch the video below or at this link.