Analysis: Sequester could hit federal grants to states

The looming sequester would put billions of dollars' worth of federal grants to states on the chopping block, according to new analysis from the Pew Center on the States.

The center said that all the federal grants for education — almost $38 billion in all — would be vulnerable to sequester cuts, as would the $3.5 billion in grants for community development.

Large chunks of the grants for the environment and social services would also be in danger, Pew found. Meanwhile, roughly 3 percent of the $284 billion in health grants would be on the table.

Washington put roughly $109 billion in automatic sequester cuts in place in the 2011 deal to raise the debt ceiling. The "fiscal cliff" deal signed into law early this year pushed the sequester deadline back to March 1, and also lopped off around $24 billion in cuts.

Officials on both sides of the aisle have said recently that they increasingly believe  the across-the-board cuts will be implemented in less than a month. Pew notes that states aren’t exactly sure how the cuts would be put into place, or how much of a hit their budgets will take. 

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