People who have had the stomach to keep up with the Mississippi Legislature’s seeming dysfunction this year are probably in no mood to be grateful.

There is, however, at least one reason they should be: It’s worse elsewhere. And in some cases it’s a lot worse.

Within hours of the new fiscal year starting on Wednesday — and after the House took time for a resolution to honor entertainer Michael Jackson — Mississippi lawmakers passed almost all components of a $6 billion assortment of taxing and spending to carry most state functions through until June 30, 2010. They’ll come back later and do the rest, including the Mississippi Public Service Commission, which fell to the cutting room floor.

It was an unusual year, as has been said, because the session, which would normally have ended in late March or early April, was delayed to see how funding cracks could be chocked with federal stimulus millions. The politics of the situation ran amuck, too. But there’s nothing unusual about that. And in the final analysis they did get the job done.

The suddenness and depth of the national economic slowdown hit almost all states hard starting last fall. With the flow of cash from sales, property and income taxes shut off, dozens of states that operate on dollar-in, dollar-out budgets were suddenly in crisis.

While Mississippi was no exception, it is states such as California and New Jersey and Florida that already had almost insurmountable deficits and/or aggressively growing social programs that today remain in a funding vise from which there is no release in sight. Unlike Mississippi, several states’ debt service payments are so large they’ve had to borrow more money to pay for basic services for years.

All across America, public agencies are having to come to grips with the fact that the private sector is not a bottomless pit for revenue. When commerce slows, the effects are far-reaching.

Gov. Haley Barbour has cautioned the Legislature in this regard, trying to make sure everyone understands that even as the economy sputters toward a recovery, the nation’s economic engine won’t be coughing up as much tax money as it was.

A lesson should be taken from California, now paying vendors with IOUs, and from states where employees may not get paid this month: Failing to stay within a state’s means is courting disaster.