On Friday, Ezra Klein, drawing on a new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, noted that $140 billion of the $800 billion federal stimulus went to the states, and thus helped plug 30 to 40 percent of state budget shortfalls on average. Because state governments can’t borrow with the freedom of the federal government, there is some logic to this. But why stop at closing 30 to 40 percent of the shortfalls? Say we more than doubled the share of the stimulus that went to the states so that we closed just about all of the shortfalls, in exchange for long-term fiscal sustainability plans. (Granted, there would be no small irony in the federal government imposing this requirement on the states.) Would that have been preferable to the stimulus package that actually passed, which included a great deal of temporary, and thus quite possibly ineffective, tax relief? There is a strong case for the $111 billion in infrastructure spending. Even if we include that, however, we still get a smaller stimulus, one that gives far more discretion to the states to respond to their particular economic challenges. The package would be smaller, but it would also act more quickly via state governments. And it would give the federal government more leeway to pass bigger stimulus legislation in the future if necessary.