United States
Since the 1970s, the United States government has provided large sums of money through block grants, under a policy that has come to be known as "devolutionary" or "new federalism." Block grants replaced the previous policy of revenue sharing (1972–87).
According to the General Accounting Office, from 1980 to 2001 the number of federal block grant programs went from 450 to 700. The grants are aimed at a wide range of activities from education to healthcare, transportation, housing and counterterrorism.
In the United States, the formulas for how much money states receive favors small states. Most grant programs have a minimum amount per state, usually 0.5% or 0.75% of the total money given to states in the program.
For instance, in 2003, under the State Homeland Security Grant Programs and Critical Infrastructure Protection Grants, Wyoming, the least populous state, received $17.5 million and California, the most populous state, received $164 million. In fiscal year 2004 Wyoming is guaranteed to receive a minimum of $15 million and California, the most populated state, $133 million. Wyoming receives $35.3 per person and California receives $4.7 per person.
Similar patterns exist for other block grant formulas. An analysis exists in the book Sizing Up the Senate.
Read more about this topic: Block Grant
Famous quotes related to united states:
“I do not look upon these United States as a finished product. We are still in the making.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1954)
“Greece is a sort of American vassal; the Netherlands is the country of American bases that grow like tulip bulbs; Cuba is the main sugar plantation of the American monopolies; Turkey is prepared to kow-tow before any United States pro-consul and Canada is the boring second fiddle in the American symphony.”
—Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko (1909–1989)
“The real charm of the United States is that it is the only comic country ever heard of.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“I hate to do what everybody else is doing. Why, only last week, on Fifth Avenue and some cross streets, I noticed that every feminine citizen of these United States wore an artificial posy on her coat or gown. I came home and ripped off every one of the really lovely refrigerator blossoms that were sewn on my own bodices.”
—Carolyn Wells (1862–1942)
“What chiefly distinguishes the daily press of the United States from the press of all other countries is not its lack of truthfulness or even its lack of dignity and honor, for these deficiencies are common to the newspapers everywhere, but its incurable fear of ideas, its constant effort to evade the discussion of fundamentals by translating all issues into a few elemental fears, its incessant reduction of all reflection to mere emotion. It is, in the true sense, never well-informed.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)