If states cannot pay for state-level functions they ought to raise their goddamned taxes.
There is no reason for the federal government to give Maryland or Virginia money for the recent snow, as an example.
Federal $$$ assistance should be for total catastrophes that an individual state cannot possibly handle, like Katrina.
A serious run of snow (which I've been shoveling every day for a week so far and really has been a terrible thing) is something a state cannot handle
only because the state chooses to not handle it.
Follow this:
There is no reason for Virginia or Maryland to budget for five feet of cumulative snow because that only happens every 50 or 100 years.
When something rare like that happens the state has to spend some money it hadn't planned on spending. It's a one-time deal... there probably won't be five feet next year. It isn't like Katrina... something no state could handle. It's just a bad, expensive winter.
When something atypical happens you borrow money and then pay it back over time when the crisis has passed. At some point you may have to raise revenue to pay it back.
The stimulus bill directed billions of dollars to California to cover state expenses. There was a crisis--the economy had collapsed. The federal government didn't have that money. It borrowed the money to give to California. But California could have gotten that money the same way the federal government did... borrow it. California is one of the world's largest economies and Califonia deficit spending to cover teacher salaries would have been just as stimulative as is the federal government doing it.
Again, it was vitally important that some government do that bit of deficit spending to keep California state workers from being laid off. It was vital economic stimulus (and/or relief). But it would have been just as stimulative and helpful if the government of California had done it herself.
But California just couldn't do that because thanks to a series of wing-nut referenda California is too just virtuous to raise taxes. California is so much better, so much more responsible than the hated federal government.
The point is that states cop an attitude that they refuse to deficit spend, refuse to borrow, refuse to raise taxes. And the the federal government is then called on to deficit spend, borrow or raise taxes. It's just shifting money from one balance sheet to another.
And the federal government is then dubbed peculiarly irresponsible because the outlays are all on the federal balance sheet.
Republican assholes refuse to fund their states properly, beg money from the federal government to cover state functions and then have the gall to bitch about the federal deficit while bragging that their state has a balanced budget!
(Not just Republicans, either. I heard Maryland governor O'Malley bragging about his state's AAA credit rating while asking for federal assistance. Jesus... we could all have a AAA credit rating if someone else paid the bills.)
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