"States had record rainy-day reserves in the run-up to the crisis. That’s pretty fiscally responsible. It’s just that the crisis is the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression. You wouldn’t want states budgeting for once-every-80-years economic storms. That’d mean keeping a lot of cash sitting around that could be more productively used for other things."

Ezra Klein pretty much destroying one of the major arguments against providing aid to states struggling to balance budgets with tax revenues plummeting and welfare obligations soaring.