(Bloomberg) -- In statehouses across the U.S., a budget-cutting congressional supercommittee and the sputtering economy threaten a fledgling recovery from the worst fiscal crisis in more than 70 years.
Stalled job growth, eroding consumer confidence and a stock market that has lost more than $2 trillion since April may cut into tax collections that have yet to fully rebound from the recession. At the same time, Washington policy makers are moving to slash federal spending, a potential threat to dozens of programs -- from Medicaid and school-lunch subsidies to defense contracts and law-enforcement grants -- that nourish state budgets and local economies.
"We need money," California Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, told reporters in Sacramento this month. "The state is facing a national economy that may go into another recession, a great retraction, and the people in Washington are cutting back even more."
With the debt-cutting supercommittee debating ways to shave id="mce_marker".5 trillion from U.S. spending over the next decade and some in Washington calling for cuts of even more, states are dealing with an added source of concern: Just how much of the approximately $500 billion they receive from the federal government each year may disappear?
