¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I’ve found the most difficult concept to dislodge from the terminally disengaged is that there’s no such thing as taxpayer money at the federal level.

It’s a tremendously useful weapon for those in power to wield when they need to convince the poor to vote against their interests.

The states are currency users, and as such are intrinsically subservient to the currency issuer, namely the federal government.

The US federal government doesn’t need whatever money the states, or anyone else, pays it. Every cent a currency issuer receives is instantly obliterated from the economy, and conversely the origin of every cent is conjured out of thin air by their budget.

That said, the states withholding federal payments could work on the chucklefucks currently in charge, because many of them are likely to believe strongly in the fiction of zero-sum economics, but I’d hazard a critical mass hold a world view built on some other fantastical hallucination from hotboxing their collective farts.