Now the opponents' favorite fact, stated as fairly as we can put it. By the Rockefeller Institute's balance-of-payments measure, Texas took in about 80 billion dollars more from Washington than it paid in (fiscal 2023). PolitiFact has rated similar claims "Mostly True." We do not run from it. Set it beside a second reputable source, and the two pull apart.
The Rockefeller Institute, measuring balance of payments, shows Texas as a net recipient of about 80 billion dollars. USAFacts, measuring taxes paid against spending received, shows Texas as a net contributor: by its FY2024 accounting Texas sent about 68 billion dollars more to Washington than it got back.
Both are real. Both are recent. They point in exactly opposite directions, and a reasonable person is entitled to ask how that is possible. The gap is mostly two things: borrowed money, and Texans' own benefits coming home.
Borrowed money first. Washington spends about 1.37 dollars for every dollar it collects. That 37-cent gap is the deficit, money it borrowed rather than raised, and the recipients' children will repay it with interest. It is the only reason most states look like they "get back more than they pay." Here is the proof, in Rockefeller's own numbers. On that measure no state was a net payer in 2020 or 2021, and only three were in 2023. When 47 to 50 states out of 50 "receive more than they pay," the measure is not tracking which states are dependent. It is tracking how much money Washington borrowed that year. And within that borrowed-money illusion, Texas still comes in low. Its ratio is 1.21 dollars received for every dollar paid, below Rockefeller's own 50-state average of 1.32. Measured against the other states, in a system rigged by borrowing to make everyone look subsidized, Texas is among the least subsidized states in the union.
Texans' own benefits second. Strip the borrowing out and look at what is left of the "receipts." Most of it is Social Security and Medicare, benefits Texans pre-paid through a lifetime of payroll taxes. Counting a retiree's own Social Security check as proof that "Texas cannot survive without Washington" is the real sleight of hand. It is her money, on its way back.
Here is the deeper reason, and it closes the case. Borrowed money is not income. It is a tax postponed. Every dollar Washington borrows and spends is a dollar that someone's taxes, with interest, will one day have to retire. So carry the ledger all the way out. Texans pay their share of federal taxes now, and their share of the taxes that retire this year's borrowing later, and when you add the two the borrowing cancels and one question is left standing. Does Texas get back its share of what Washington spends, set against its share of what Washington collects? It does not. Texas draws about 7 cents of every dollar the federal government spends and pays about 8 cents of every dollar it raises. Under its weight on the spending, over its weight on the bill. Credit Texas with every last borrowed dollar that lands inside its borders, and it still sends Washington about 68 billion dollars a year more than it gets back, the third-largest net contribution of any state, behind only California and New York. The net recipient is a mirage the deficit paints, and the moment you treat borrowed money as the tax it is, the mirage burns off.
Take out the borrowed money and the returning benefits, and the "net recipient" vanishes. What is left is not money Texas ships off for nothing. Much of the borrowing financed spending, some of it here. The part that financed nothing, that buys not a road or a base or a benefit, is the interest, 72 to 80 billion a year and climbing, pure service on a debt somebody else ran up. That is the number to hold onto.