D.C., Virginia big winners in Pentagon money chase: study

U.S. states receive roughly $1,500 per person from the Defense Department’s massive spending budget annually, but those dollars are distributed on a strikingly uneven basis, with the District of Columbia and Virginia the biggest recipients of the Pentagon’s largesse, a new Pew report shows.

Of the Pentagon’s $483 billion base budget in 2017, Pew analysts found that federal defense spending by state ran the gamut that year, from a mere $488 per person in Michigan to nearly $6,300 on average for each U.S. citizen in Virginia. Washington D.C. received the most defense dollars per capita, coming in at just over $9,000.

The individual spending averages were calculated over five major categories, including defense contracts, salaries and wages, retirement benefits, non retirement benefits, and federal grants, Pew researchers said.

“The U.S. government spends defense dollars in every state … but the size and mix of those investments vary substantially across the states, so changes in defense spending will affect them differently, and the impacts will depend on which programs and operations are increased or cut,” Pew analysts said in the report, released Friday.

States like Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Colorado, home to a number of major Army and Air Force bases and installations, are on the high end of the spectrum, each getting over $1,900 per resident on average. Hawaii, which is home to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, and Virginia which is where U.S. Marine Corps Headquarters and the Pentagon are located, also fall under that top tier of per capitaspending.

Many Midwestern states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and West Virginia are at the other end of the spending spectrum, taking in less than $700 in defense dollars per resident. Much of the Pacific Northwest also fall under the average, except for Washington State, which boasts both Joint Base Lewis-McChord and Naval Base Kitsap, home to the largest U.S. submarine base on the West Coast.