Yesterday afternoon, in a ceremony at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, President Obama signed a monumental $787 billion economic stimulus bill in hopes of stemming job losses and restarting the economy. But long before that, residents in every state began doing the math to determine how well or poorly they did.

New Hampshire turned out to be like the kid whose joy in a new bike was dampened by learning that some of his friends got ponies. Which is not to say that any state, in this economy, can afford to look a gift horse in the mouth. The money is sorely needed.

Do the math however, and on a per-capita basis, New Hampshire fared poorly. Divide the total stimulus package by 302 million, the Census Bureau's estimate of the nation's population in 2007, and it comes out to $2.6 billion for every million Americans.

Based on New Hampshire's estimated population of 1.3 million in 2007, if the sweet federal pie were divided equally, the Granite State should have been in line for something like $3.5 billion, not the $860 million reported by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen's office.

It's far too soon to say to the dollar how much the state will get. The stimulus act is 1,000 pages long, and it calls for existing programs, operating under hundreds of separate guidelines, to allocate the money. Further complicating matters, some money will be awarded through competitive grants, and some money will have to be returned if the state can't spend it fast enough in ways that pass muster with an elaborate auditing system created to prevent fraud and waste.

Ferreting out waste should be easier than in any previous government funding system because the administration's rules mandate transparency on a state and federal level. Any citizen will supposedly be able to go to a website and see exactly how taxpayer money is being spent.

New Hampshire would receive more aid if the state were in worse economic shape. Its unemployment rate of 4.6 percent is well below the 7.6 percent national average, and a relatively small percentage of residents are living in poverty. If such statistics worsen, the stimulus act calls for increasing aid to the state, but no one wants that to happen.

The states that received the biggest share of stimulus money are those whose economies are in the worst shape. They include Michigan, where the auto industry is in extremis, and places like Florida, Arizona, Nevada and California, where the collapse of the housing bubble has been the steepest and fastest.

Very little of the stimulus package will be given to states as unrestricted aid. The act was designed to create jobs, not balance state and local budgets. But to the extent that federal aid pays a bigger share of Medicaid and education costs, for example, money could be freed up that will make it possible to preserve jobs in the public sector that might otherwise be lost.

The Obama administration's goal is to spend three-quarters of the $787 billion over the next 18 months. The money will build and refurbish schools, replace aged roads and bridges, cut tax bills by $400 per individual and $800 per couple, expand broadband service to rural areas and fund a host of public works projects. New Hampshire didn't fare as well as most other states under the stimulus act, but it should be glad for the money it gets and put it to the best possible use.

Correction

Yesterday's editorial erred in saying that Rep. Evalyn Merrick sponsored a 2007 bill to legalize the medical use of marijuana. That bill was sponsored by Rep. Timothy Robertson of Keene. Robertson's bill failed to pass the House, and Gov. John Lynch took no position on it. Lynch did threaten to veto a 2008 bill that would have reduced the penalties for marijuana possession.