Over the past decade or so, New Jersey has gotten back somewhere between 50 cents and 75 cents for every dollar it sends to Washington DC. Part of that is because New Jersey has a lot of rich people living there and they pay a lot of Federal taxes but an awful lot of money is spent in red states on things like rural infrastructure, farm subsidies, and even welfare and food stamps that are not as obvious in red states as they are in blighted urban neighborhoods in blue states. That’s why the federal money machine is so hard to reduce. It’s been carefully crafted so that even red states have a stake in perpetuating it. If you give every congressional district a slice of the pie, nobody wants to be the one taking that slice away from their district, even the Republicans.
1. Military facilities (small, densely populated states like New Jersey tend to have few of these compared to larger and more rural sates).
2. Indian reservations (I believe this factor alone puts New Mexico at or near the top of the list of "recipient" states).
3. Retiree populations (if Social Security and Medicare entitlements are included in the Federal spending calculations at the state level).
Kentucky is also home to Ft. Campbell, Ft. Knox and Kentucky Lake and several other Federal run agencies/projects.
It also doesn’t help when your major local industry is being oppressed by the President and his anti coal policies