Jason Deparle reports in today's Times that a number of states are having problems paying unemployment benefits because, guess what, revenues are down and they need to make massive budget cuts.

As a Californian I can say that I am glad not to be alone.

But I must point out here that one of the triumphs of the moderate Democrats/Republicans during the stimulus debate was to cut about $1 billion off the package in aid to the states. Which aid was designed to help state governments to live through the declines in revenue caused by the crash.

Which aid would have almost certainly been spent faster than the federal programs that made up the rest of the stimulus.

But, marching to the beat of their own unfathomable drummer, these folks decided that the best policy is always to split the difference. This meant that they had to find a place to make cuts in the stimulus package. For reasons best known to themselves they decided that aid to states was the best place to make the cuts that they needed to make to show that they could make cuts in the stimulus package.

Because a package crafted by some of the best economists in the nation could easily been improved on by a bunch of political hacks too wishy washy to have strong views on the events of the past eight years.