Really? I know you're only half serious, but that's the best you can come up with?
Most "net recipient" states are sparsely populated, large land mass states (Texas is the latter, but not the former). Between A) Ag subsidies, B)Federal highway dollars, and C)military installations, that's a lot of dollars going to relatively few people.
Ag subsidies are a complete waste, granted, though the country does still have to be fed. But the other two have to be spent, and while Navy bases pretty much have to be on the coasts, it probably makes some sense to put Army and Air Force inland so they are centrally located, making them protected from border incursions as well as better able to react to other events.
New Mexico's the highest recipient state almost entirely because of Los Alamos. Now, we could probably put that lab somwhere in Connecticut between NYC and Boston if you really want those dollars staying out east. But my guess is you'd rather have a nuclear testing facility in the middle of a freaking desert just in case something goes wrong.
Like I've said before, too, how would having I-80 help anyone if it stopped in Salt Lake City, started again until Chicago, stopped again at South Bend, then started again near Pittsburgh? The whole point of the Interstate system is to connect the country. Guess what, a lane-mile of interstate in Nebraska probably costs roughly the same as a lane-mile of Interstate in Mass.; at the least it's probably within a 5-10% differential (labor isn't the primary expense, materials and machinery are). Yet Mass. has more people and fewer interstate miles. Of course Nebraska's going to be a net + on highway funding alone.
