Fallin's Medicaid opponents quiet on another taxation shift

Those same critics are notably silent about a federal tax break that has the same practical effect: the deduction for state and local taxes. That break has been criticized as an indirect subsidy for liberal state governments that tax and spend freely. Citizens in states living within their means pay more in federal tax than their counterparts in high-tax states that are fiscal train wrecks.

Writing in The Washington Post, Charles Lane noted, “What the deduction does is enable higher-income states and localities to tax — and spend — more than they otherwise would, while shifting some of the cost to other states.”

In 2009, those living in California, New York and Illinois got more than a third of the deduction's total national value. On the other hand, Oklahoma tax filers claimed just six-tenths of 1 percent of the total national deduction provided by the tax break. Notably, California and Illinois are the United States' top contenders to become the nation's first failed states, the domestic equivalent of Greece.