Does California give more than it gets on federal disaster aid? Fact-checking Sen. Adam Schiff

As Californians assess the damages and recovery costs from widespread wildfires in greater Los Angeles, lawmakers and President Donald Trump are floating ideas for overhauling the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Trump has suggested eliminating the agency, something that would require congressional action. He ordered a council form to review the agency and deliver a report in six months. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said Congress may want to attach conditions, such as a debt limit increase, to California aid.

That’s a "shameful" idea, Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Jan. 26 on NBC’s "Meet the Press."  

Schiff said Congress should not tie unrelated policy objectives to aid or view disaster aid requests through a partisan lens. 

"And let me say this, as a Californian, we have given more to the recovery of other states than any other state in the union," Schiff said.

Responding to Johnson’s comments calling the idea of conditioning California aid "a common-sense notion," U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., echoed Schiff’s sentiment. 

"California is the largest contributor of tax revenue to the federal treasury by far," Padilla wrote Jan. 27 on X. "In 2022 alone, California paid $83 billion more to the federal government than it received. Louisiana took $34.5 billion more federal dollars than it paid. Who is subsidizing whom here?"

We heard similar statements during Trump’s first presidency that California is a "donor" state – sending more money to the federal government than it gets in return. We found that Schiff cited a credible academic analysis, which requires some explanation.

How a policy group calculates states’ ‘balance of payments’

A Schiff spokesperson cited analysis from the Rockefeller Institute of Government, a public policy arm of the State University of New York.

For several years, the institute has examined the amount of federal taxes paid by each state’s residents and businesses compared with the amount of federal funding the state receives. The institute refers to the difference of those two numbers as the state’s "balance of payments" — a phrase used by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y. who was elected to the Senate in 1976 and served 24 years.

The institute’s most recent analysis, published in 2024, showed that California’s balance of payments was greater than any other state in the nation. 

California paid $83.1 billion more in federal taxes than it received from the federal government — a difference greater than any other state when measured in sheer dollars.

The state remained a standout when its population was considered, but it didn’t lead all states. The analysis showed that per capita, Californians paid $2,129 more in federal taxes than they received — that’s more than all but three other states.

So, Schiff was right that California’s federal funding contributions far outweigh what it gets from the federal government in return, but the disaster aid comparison is not as much of a straight line.

"The federal government does not have a separate, dedicated revenue stream exclusively for disaster aid," said Joel Tirado, an institute spokesperson. "FEMA funding comes from general revenue aggregated nationally. So, it isn’t possible to know how much of California’s taxes go to disaster relief specifically."

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Jared Walczak, vice president of state projects at the Tax Foundation, a center-right think tank, said policymakers in states such as California sometimes object that their taxpayers are subsidizing other states' taxpayers. But taxpayers are not being treated differently from one state to another. Low-income and high-income taxpayers will receive the same treatment whether they live in California, Nebraska or Arkansas, Walczak said.

"The difference is that California has more high earners than other states, and under a progressive tax and transfer system, high earners face progressively higher tax burdens which serve, in part, to fund programs that benefit lower-income households," Walczak said. "It's not that Californians are subsidizing Arkansans: it's that high earners in California and Arkansas and everywhere else face higher tax burdens than low earners in California and Arkansas and everywhere else." 

Joshua Sewell, research and policy director at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan taxpayer advocacy group, said he agreed with Schiff’s general point because California’s economy and its contributions to federal revenues exceed every other state.

"That’s because federal lawmakers have taken those commingled funds generated from the income tax, customs duties, and excise taxes and redistributed them through federal programs," Sewell said.

Brad Franklin, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan think tank, said disaster response programs are implemented by many agencies and departments, which receive most of their funding from supplemental appropriations. 

"That money ultimately comes from tax receipts, and California definitely pays more than its share," Franklin said. "Putting things in per capita terms, as (the Rockefeller report) did, is helpful for thinking about tax burden per person. But total receipts are much more relevant to this question."

Schiff said, "As a Californian, we have given more to the recovery of other states than any other state in the union." 

Schiff was citing the Rockefeller Institute of Government’s analysis of 2022 data. It showed California paid $83 billion to the federal government more than it received. This is not surprising since California is the most populous state. When that difference is calculated per capita, however, the figures showed that, compared with California, three other states paid more to the federal government than they received.

We rate this statement Mostly True.

RELATED: Republican leaders want to put conditions on California wildfire aid. Is there precedent for that?