Over at Neighborhood Effect, my colleague Matt Mitchell has a great post – and response to Ezra Klein – about why Congress shouldn’t send more stimulus money to the states.

The argument is that the massive increase in federal spending in the last few years has more than made up for any decreases in state spending. His data is informative.

At the same time that aggregate state spending was falling by 4.3% and 6.8%, federal spending was increasing by a whopping 17.9% (2009) and 5.8% (2010). This, combined with the fact that the Federal Government spends trillions while states spend hundreds of billions (in the aggregate), means that the state spending contraction comes nowhere close to offsetting the federal spending increase.

His back and forth with Harry Moroz over at Huffington Post is a good read too: here and here. The New York Times blog picked it up too, which is great, because it means that our side is being heard.