The Florida governor is refusing to accept millions in federal funding that would help his constituents. Why?

You don’t often see someone turn down $346 million in free money. But that’s effectively what Florida’s Ron DeSantis is doing.

The Republican governor and presidential candidate has blocked his state from getting energy-efficiency incentives under the Inflation Reduction Act, the signature Biden-administration policy that passed in 2022, Politico noted last week. DeSantis vetoed a request by the GOP-dominated state legislature to establish a $5 million rebate program—a program that is essential to accessing $341 million more.

DeSantis hasn’t explained his veto decision. Politico frames this as a story about the coming presidential race, saying the denial could “blunt the political impact of legislation that some Democrats believe will be a key factor in the 2024 election.” But another and more salient way to think about it is that it’s part of many Republican politicians’ strong commitment in recent years to ideological purity—and owning the libs—even at the expense of impoverishing and immiserating their own constituents.

Ronald Brownstein: The Republican axis reversing the rights revolution

The structure of the IRA offers federal money to states, but it can’t force them to take it. This model is somewhat common in major legislation—for example, the Obama-era Affordable Care Act’s cash for expansion of Medicaid coverage, or the Trump-era CARES Act funding for COVID-related expenses. Some Republican governors have in the past rejected money that came from major Democratic initiatives, including Medicaid expansion and also a high-speed-rail initiative under Obama. DeSantis is the first governor to reject such a large pot under the IRA. Other governors—mostly Republicans—have rejected other parts of the IRA, though Kentucky Democrat Andy Beshear turned down an emissions-reduction grant.

Battles between the federal government and states—and particularly between the federal government and southern states—are one of the most enduring themes of the American republic. Conservative governors have bristled at big spending, and southern governors have resisted federal-government interventions, especially on matters of civil rights.

Still, states have in the past had a hard time turning down large sums of money delivered with few strings attached. Most voters aren’t as ideologically committed as staunch fiscal conservatives in government, or are at least able to get past their hesitations if the money benefits them. After the creation of Medicaid, some states dragged their feet about participating, but within 17 years, every state had joined.
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In recent years, conservative leaders have become more rigid. Ten states still have not accepted the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, and many of them are deep-red states that show little inclination toward changing their mind. That isn’t to say that voters don’t want the expansion—time and again, when voters in states with resistant governments are given a chance to vote on the matter, they vote in favor. But conservative politicians in those 10 states have calculated that the risk of popular anger is outweighed by their sincere ideological commitments and, additionally, by the political benefits of being seen fighting a liberal program. One reason that snubbing Medicaid expansion, like the original Medicaid program before it, is a political winner for them is that the prospective beneficiaries are less well-off and thus have less political influence. In southern states, they are disproportionately voters of color, who are less likely to support Republicans anyway. Although DeSantis’s IRA decision looks on the surface like a similar choice, it has the potential to land differently. The rebates that he rejected would have been available to not just low-income but also middle-income households; his decision deprives them of an opportunity to get money back for upgrading their home’s energy efficiency.

Ronald Brownstein: America is growing apart, possibly for good

The result of these choices is, as my colleague Ronald Brownstein has reported, a de facto split between red states and blue states into two distinctly different countries, with widely divergent outcomes:

The gross domestic product per person and the median household income are now both more than 25 percent greater in the blue section than in the red, according to [the analyst Michael] Podhorzer’s calculations. The share of kids in poverty is more than 20 percent lower in the blue section than red, and the share of working households with incomes below the poverty line is nearly 40 percent lower. Health outcomes are diverging too. Gun deaths are almost twice as high per capita in the red places as in the blue, as is the maternal mortality rate. The COVID vaccination rate is about 20 percent higher in the blue section, and the per capita COVID death rate is about 20 percent higher in the red.

In short, Republican governors are choosing policies that make the lives of their citizens worse in order to make a point. Rejecting environmental policies like those in the IRA is particularly poignant in Florida, where the effects of climate change are already being felt more often and more acutely than in many other parts of the country—as the recent destruction brought by Hurricane Idalia reminds. And because the federal government can reallocate unused money to other states, not taking it could exacerbate the existing divide.

Because he’s running for president, DeSantis has a special incentive to be seen as opposing a major Biden initiative. The question is whether other Republican governors will see a need to emulate him—just as some of his culture-war approaches have become models for red states. That would be a loss for their citizens, and another win for the great divergence.

David A. Graham is a staff writer at The Atlantic.