Originally posted by: Hafen
Don't see the quote...
So why does she keep sending lobbyists to Washington to make Alaska the biggest leach in the union? Trying to just take us for all we're worth? Time to cut them off looks like.
You don't see the quote because she never said it. That quote is from Joe Vogler.
I've explained the reasoning for why Alaska gets back so much federal money. Obviously it's a big state with a very spread out and growing population. Highways, bridges and other infrastructure normally paid for by federal dollars in other states are expensive to build in Alaska. And that's if you want to look at the bridges and roads and pork. By far the greatest percentage of federal dollars sent to Alaska are paid out to individuals in the form of social security and medicare.
And for what it's worth, Alaska only got back about $5.4 billion more than it paid out in 2005. Per capita return it was #3. For some reason everyone wants to get their panties in a wad over .0016% of the federal budget. (Assuming a $3 trillion budget)
But digging a little deeper... as part of the Statehood Compact with the US, Alaska is supposed to get 90% of all the revenue it generates through natural resource development on federal lands and the Federal Govnt should get 10%. The Fed has never held up their end of the bargain, choosing to ignore the statehood agreement and split revenues 50/50. That's billions and billions and billions of dollars owed to Alaska over the last 50 years that were never paid out.
Some see what you call 'pork' as simply getting back what was rightfully theirs in the first place.
http://www.usembassy.at/en/dow...d/pdf/anwr_revenue.pdf 10th page
The manner is which royalties are split between other states and the federal government
differs. For all states except Alaska, direct royalties under the Mineral Leasing Act (MLA)
are divided equally (50-50) between the state in which the deposits are located and the
federal government. The MLA also provides that all states except Alaska also get back 40%
from the Reclamation Fund (established by the Reclamation Act of 1902), in effect giving
each state 90% of the royalties and the federal government 10%. Alaska does not receive
allocations from the Reclamation Fund, so to equalize royalty treatment among the states,
the Alaska Statehood Act and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act provide that
Alaska?s royalty share is 90% of the direct royalties (rather than 50%).
This is from an ANWR report. Alaska is routinely squeezed for a 50/50 split. If ANWR were opened, oil remained at its current levels and the Fed took 50% instead of 10%, Alaska would stand to lose around $70 billion over the life of that field. (About $3.5 billion per year) And that is just one field. That doesn't count Prudhoe (which is bigger than ANWR), Kuparuk, Alpine, Nikiski and all the other fields that they didn't get full value on over the last 20-30 years. And THAT'S just oil... Add in coal, gas, gold, copper, tin... It adds up.
So don't worry! The Fed is still ahead in the who-owes-who game by about $1-2 billion per year.
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