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of these funds. Moynihan figures federal assistance to average 3¢ per rider in New York and 20¢ in Los Angeles, 19¢ in Houston, 12¢ in Dallas. The average aid per rider in cities of more than 1 million people is double New York’s.* The New York Regional Plan Association calculated that if this formula were changed, in 1976 New York City would have received an additional $110 million in mass transit aid. New York is only one of thirteen states to receive the minimum 50 percent federal reimbursement for welfare. Poor states, like Arkansas, receive 75 percent. Yet if New York garnered the same 60 percent as Proxmire’s Wisconsin, according to the Fiscal Observer, an independent and respected publication, the city would save $195 million in welfare and Medicaid. New York, as another instance, has 30 percent of the nation’s known narcotics addicts, yet receives less than 1 percent of the $296 million in available federal funds.

Where New York gets murdered is in its share of “hard” federal dollars—defense expenditures, federal installations and jobs, dams, roads, public works. In 1977, a bipartisan coalition of sixteen governors and 204 members of Congress from the Northeast and Middle West released a study showing how defense dollars neglected their regions. Their sixteen states accounted for 45 percent of the country’s population and almost half its taxes, yet received 20 percent or less of all defense expenditures. The number of defense employees mushroomed 35 percent between 1950 and 1976, yet the number of defense employees declined 3 percent in their states—39 percent in New York. The military construction budget for fiscal 1978 earmarked just 9 percent to their states. Of the 761 defense facilities closed between 1961 and 1975, 43 percent were in the sixteen states—fifty-three in New York. “The decline in defense expenditures,” lamented Republican Congressman Donald J. Mitchell of Herkimer, New York, “has increased unemployment in the region, exacerbating economic problems, while the shift of expenditures to other areas has helped fuel those areas’ economic boom.” If military wages and salaries had been allocated “equally” to all states between 1940 and 1976, a study by Bernard Gifford of the Russell Sage Foundation reported, “New York State would have ‘received’ more than $21 billion (in current 1940–1976 dollars) above the amount that it actually received. And Georgia would have ‘lost’ $5 billion.”

Of course, these disparities can be as misleading as Moynihan’s balance of payments “gap.” Defense expenditures cannot be “equal.” Strategic considerations often dictate where defense dollars are spent, a prime reason Alaska, Hawaii and California rank so high. Climate also plays a role—inclement weather impedes military training and operations, and cold weather costs more (heavy coats, boots, electricity costs, etc.). I hated every goddamn minute of my winter basic training, but I thank the Lord it was in warm San Antonio, Texas, rather than frigid Watertown, New York. Political climate also plays a part. The Northeast states have traditionally been less politically hospitable to the military than have Southern states. Ours, thankfully, is a tradition rich in social protest. A pass is needed to build here, plus several years of public hearings. We wouldn’t even give the President a pass—by 1968, the only places where Lyndon Johnson could escape demonstrations and speak were out-of-the-way military bases.

But geography and climate played only a part. Congressional barons like Mendel Rivers of South Carolina and Richard Russell of Georgia, by controlling the important Appropriations and Defense committees, delivered the pork for their districts, as Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson delivered space facilities for Texas or Robert Kerr delivered dams and public works for Oklahoma. While members of New York’s delegation tended to deliver speeches on the suffering in Bangladesh, the killing in Northern Ireland.

A similar tilt shows up in federal employment. Between 1960 and 1970, for example, the number of federal civilian employees