Only Nevada and Utah got fewer dollars per capita from Washington than Minnesota in 2006, the Census Bureau reported this week. That’s right, our paltry $6,175 per Minnesotan is third from the bottom. At the top of the list of the Census Bureau’s census of 2006 federal spending were Louisiana ($16,263) and Mississippi ($14,516), not surprising, given that both were devastated by Hurricane Katrina the year before. In third place is the state we often feel a kinship with, Alaska ($13,805), whose ever-resourceful Congressional delegation dreamed up the infamous $223 million“Bridge to Nowhere” that would connect a small town to a tiny island.

The numbers are truly awesome: $2.45 trillion in domestic spending in 2006, 7.5 percent higher than the year before. Nearly half the spending went to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

In 2006, Minnesota’s population represented 1.7 percent of the U.S. population, but the state only got 1.3 percent of the federal pie. The state came out slightly better on the separate report on federal aid to state and local governments, a smaller subset of federal spending. Minnesota ranked 35th.

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