Philadelphia, recognized as America’s premier city in 1787, served a countless number of historic roles during our first quarter-century when Virginia’s Fairfax County was just farmland.
Congress met in the easternmost meeting room of Independence Hall from 1790 until 1800, when our nation’s capital was moved to Washington, D.C., creating an entirely new metropolitan area.
Fairfax County’s population was 13,000 then, but after two centuries 1 million people now live there and is ranked as the nation’s second richest county in a Forbes magazine survey.
Fairfax owes its wealth to Philadelphia, New York City, Los Angeles and other populous communities which plow their tax revenues into the federal treasury.
The federal government has built facilities in northern Virginia, most notably the Pentagon. Two heavily traversed airports are located in northern Virginia and thousands of federal employees live there.
Now Fairfax County and Virginia generally are threatened by the Department of Defense’s planned slashing of private military contractors and shutdown of a base in Norfolk.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates last August 2011 proposed three years of 10 percent cuts to military contracting.
Virginia received $35 billion in defense contracts that provided 530,000 contracting and associated jobs in fiscal 2008; 70 percent of that money went to northern Virginia, said Stephen Fuller, director of the Center of Regional Analysis at George Mason University, according to The Washington Post.
A heavy proportion of those contracting firms are located in Fairfax County. I recall visiting Tysons Corner more than two decades ago, which was a heavily congested area. With growing development in northern Virginia since then, imagine what it must be like now.
“Virginia is more vulnerable to this kind of policy shift than any other state,” Fuller said. “Defense spending was our strength during the downturn. It kept unemployment lower here than in most other states. It kept the economy from crashing as far as other states’. It’s also our Achilles’ heel.
“It’s (contractor cuts) going to disproportionately affect Northern Virginia,” he added.
Sharon Bulova, chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors told the Post that Gates’ decision “would definitely have an impact…I wouldn’t say this would halt our recovery, but it’s not going to help.”
Gates has also proposed disbanding the U.S. Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, which employs 2,800 military and civilian personnel along with 3,300 contractors, most in southeastern Virginia.
Virginia politicians of both parties have been up in arms over these planned cuts, but is the federal government obligated to maintain these contracts and the installations for the sake of Virginia’s economy?
The government felt no obligation when it closed down the country’s first naval shipyard in 1995, taking 7,000 jobs with it. The Philadelphia Naval Shipyard originated at Front Street along the Delaware River in 1776 and later moved downriver to the edge of South Philadelphia. The shipyard and other military installations in and around Norfolk went untouched.
Philadelphia’s Frankford Arsenal, where small-arms ammunition was designed and developed, closed in 1977.
Philadelphia and other populous communities and states have not only bolstered northern Virginia and the Norfolk area but other states. Some states, particularly northeastern and West Coast states, provide more money to the federal government than they get back in return.
The Public Policy Institute of New York, Inc. prepared a chart that catalogues these numbers state by state from 2001. It was specifically aimed at comparing New York state with the other 49. California paid $264 billion and got $206 billion back, creating a $58 billion deficit, and New York paid $166 billion while receiving $127 billion, the deficit being $39.6 billion.
As states adjacent to Washington, Virginia saw a nearly 50 percent surplus in 2001, spending $52.8 billion and receiving $74.8 billion, and Maryland paid nearly $42 billion while getting back almost $51 billion.
Pennsylvania came out ahead $1.8 billion after spending $83 billion. Except for Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, much of Pennsylvania’s population is scattered over a massive area consisting of small cities and rural areas.
Most states that significantly benefit are the smaller ones, especially in the South and the West. Alaska, ranked 47th in population, received $2.4 billion above its $4.2 billion output to the feds, and Kentucky - represented in the Senate by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and tea partier Rand Paul - drew $6.7 billion above its tax expenditures $20.5 billion.
The institute issued a statement with the chart which reads: “The federal government’s tax revenues in each state are heavily influenced by the relative wealth of the state. Because New York is relatively wealthier than most other states, it sends proportionately more tax dollars to Washington than almost any other state. Some federal spending programs, such as Medicaid, are also influenced by the relative wealth of states.”
A similar study was conducted each year by Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government to address, as a press release from 2000 states, “the ongoing concern about whether states receive a ‘fair share’ of federal spending or pay more than their ‘fair share’ in taxes.
“From a national perspective, the Kennedy School researchers find significant differences in the way the federal budget affects individual states. Most striking is that the 10 states with the largest deficits have remained virtually unchanged for the past eight years.
“These 10 states, all but two of which are in the Northeast and Great Lakes regions, had a combined outflow of about $93 billion in FY 1999 - up from $87 billion in FY 1998. Connecticut once again had the distinction of having the largest deficit in the nation, nearly $2,800 per person.
“The states with large surpluses are less concentrated than the states with large deficits, but there is a noticeable geographic pattern toward the south. New Mexico led the nation with a per capita surplus of nearly $4,000, and a total of 10 states had surpluses that exceeded $2,000 per person.”
Soon, Virginians will be dealt an unluckier hand than that to which they have been accustomed.
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