It’s free money!

Using federal stimulus money to prop up struggling state budgets has been a wonderful success, according to Chad Stone, an economist at the leftist Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, D.C.

"The money has caused a very sharp change in the path of the economy, which has been in steep decline," Mr. Stone argued in a Monday USA Today story. "The stimulus is working as intended."

Perhaps. For if "working as intended" means "helping to blow out the federal deficit while also allowing state lawmakers to avoid difficult choices and setting the stage for bigger budget calamities and massive tax hikes," then, yes, the stimulus money is indeed "working as intended."

Consider that "federal cash is now the No. 1 revenue source for the state and local governments, surpassing sales and property taxes," USA Today reports.

And what have lawmakers done with these beltway handouts, which were supposed to fund "shovel ready" construction projects or one-shot injections to help budget-strapped states limp through the hard times? Why, they've spent it as fast as the checks have arrived -- many times on items that will increase baseline budgets.

While the private sector has shed 1.3 million jobs -- a 1.2 percent reduction -- USA Today reports that state and local governments, flush with federal cash, added 12,000 workers in the last quarter. In addition, the newspaper notes, public-sector compensation was up 4 percent in the second quarter, while private-sector workers saw pay hikes average 0.8 percent.

In fact, the stimulus money is simply masking the wounds state taxpayers have suffered at the hands of spendthrift lawmakers, not healing them.

Take Nevada. Lawmakers accepted about $1.5 billion in stimulus funds, which allowed them to pad the budget and avoid spending less this biennium than the last. But since then, despite Mr. Stone's rosy economic proclamations, state gaming and sales tax collections have continued to drop precipitously, meaning lawmakers next session will likely face a worse budget gap than they did this year -- and this time they won't have welfare from Washington to help get the patient through triage.

The stimulus funds only postponed the inevitable. Which means state lawmakers next year will either come hat in hand again to the feds or be pleading with taxpayers to bend over for more and more "revenue enhancements."

Because true spending restraint is never on the table.