Each year, the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit research group, crunches numbers from the Census Bureau to produce an intriguing figure: how much each state receives in federal spending for every dollar it pays in federal taxes.

For example, according to the most recent data, for every dollar the average North Dakotan paid in federal taxes, he received $2.07 in federal benefits. But while someone in Fargo was doubling his money, his counterpart in neighboring Minnesota was being shortchanged. For every dollar Minnesotans sent to Washington, only 77 cents in federal spending flowed back to the state.

Using the Tax Foundation's analysis, it's possible to group the 50 states into two categories: Givers and Takers. Giver states get back less than a dollar in spending for every dollar they contribute to federal coffers. Taker states pocket more than a dollar for every tax dollar they send to Washington. Thirty-three states are Takers; 16 are Givers. (One state, Indiana, has a perfect one-to-one ratio of taxes paid and spending received.

As seat of the federal government, the District of Columbia has no choice but to be a Taker, and is therefore not comparable to the 50 states in this regard.

The Democrats' electability predicament comes into focus when you compare the map of Giver and Taker states with the well-worn electoral map of red (Republican) and blue (Democrat) states. You might expect that in the 2000 presidential election, Republicans, the party of low taxes and limited government, would have carried the Giver states -- while Democrats, the party of wild spending and wooly bureaucracy, would have appealed to the Taker states. But it was the reverse.

George W. Bush was the candidate of the Taker states. Al Gore was the candidate of the Giver states.

Consider:

78% of Mr. Bush's electoral votes came from Taker states. 76% of Mr. Gore's electoral votes came from Giver states.

Of the 33 Taker states, Mr. Bush carried 25. Of the 16 Giver states, Mr. Gore carried 12.

Republicans seem to have become the new welfare party -- their constituents live off tax dollars paid by people who vote Democratic. Voters in red states like Idaho, Montana Alaska and Wyoming are some of the country's fiercest critics of government, yet they're also among the biggest recipients of federal largess. Meanwhile, Democratic voters in the coastal blue states -- the ones who are often portrayed as shiftless moochers -- are left to carry the load.

That's all about to change with the self-destruction of the weak Republican presidential candidate, and the huge gains in Congress and the Senate, thanks to the disasterous Republican policies of the past eight years.

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Be thou faithful unto Death
And I will give thee a crown of Life

"The problem with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, it's just they know so much that isn't so"
- Ronald Reagan

"A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger, is prepared for a Master and deserves one"
- Alexander Hamilton

Oh cruel fate, to be thusly boned. Ask not for whom the bone bones. It bones for thee.