The 83^rd Texas Legislature is currently underway and they’ve been prepared for the automatic massive federal budget cuts.　

They’ve created a House Committee on the Texas Response to Federal Sequestration. An interim report outlines a lot of the potential impact to local services. The largest Texas grants are exempt, such as food stamps and Pell grants, but the largest non-exempt grants include Title 1 grants.

That’s federal money for schools with a lot of disadvantaged children. That includes the Amarillo Independent School District. The Texas Education Agency would lose more than $500 million dollars. 85% of the funding for the Texas Workforce Commission is actually from the federal government.　

The Committee says sequestration would have an especially damaging impact on the agency. Sequestration cuts to Head Start funding would result in almost 1500 Texas jobs lost. There are many more potential effects listed in the report. 　

The Committee says this demonstrates the potential pitfalls of becoming too dependent on the federal government. On the other hand local higher education facilities such as Amarillo College and West Texas A&M University faced a budget shortfall in the last Texas Legislative session.　 Lawmakers slashed education funding.　

Local administrators turned to federal grants. Now there may be fewer of those. Amarillo College President Paul Matney says, "We have a Department of Labor grant and we have an Economic Development Administration grant. I don’t think those grants are going to be affected, but I think future grants might be. That would be one aspect of the sequester that would have a negative effect on Amarillo College, I think."