This AP article, from the pre-budget-ceiling-deal days, does nothing so well as emphasize the instability on which big-government advocates would have our entire society rest. Its main point is that the states are not well prepared to absorb cuts in the aid that the federal government sends them each year.

“We have the potential for disaster should there be a major realignment in federal funding that results in a cost shift to states,” said Nevada state Sen. Sheila Leslie, a Democrat from Reno who recently discussed the issue with Obama administration officials in Washington. “In short, we are teetering on the edge right now, and a cost shift could send us over the cliff.”

Now that Congress and the President have reached a deal to skirt the federal government’s spending problem for a while longer, do you think that states will take the reprieve as an opportunity to trim and reform their own behavior so as to be better situated as the probability of cuts in federal funding continues to increase?
I wouldn’t bet on it — not the least because the better prepared the states are, the less pressure there will be on the feds to keep the payments rolling in. Brinkmanship isn’t just a periodic political strategy between the parties; it’s a strategy for operating municipalities, states, and the federal government in a system built on confiscating the wealth of people who actually generate it.
Here’s the only voice of sanity in the entire article:

Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell said he believes substantial funding cuts would have less of an impact on his state than allowing the federal government to stay on its current course of mounting debt.