| For all the attention paid to the attempt by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk to cut spending in Washington, it’s out in the rest of the country where millions of Americans are most likely to feel the effects. States, counties, cities and towns are already paring back future plans and cutting their own budgets as they brace for the administration’s austerity measures to hit. That means pain that will be felt broadly, particularly in places that voted overwhelmingly to return Trump to the White House. On a per capita basis, red states like Alaska, Kentucky and Louisiana are among those most dependent on federal money, a Bloomberg analysis of federal spending data shows. What that means in practice is a challenge that falls on many local officials. Take Waukesha County, Wisconsin, where Republican County Executive Paul Farrow said his region stands to lose some portion of the $40 million to $50 million it gets annually in direct funding from Washington to use on local services. There, the long-running upgrade of a six-mile link between Interstates 43 and 94, near Milwaukee, is now caught in the same funding limbo faced by road, rail and bus projects around the country, including some that were started when Joe Biden was president. Farrow is running budget analyses, trying to plan for what the county might have to pay for out of its own coffers. One possibility they have to consider: that the feds might cut them off altogether. The Bloomberg analysis also shows how the administration is pulling back on the spending levers under its control. In February, the federal government made $4.3 billion in obligations — the Washington budgetary term for a formal go-ahead to start spending grant money. That’s 57.5% less than in the same month one year earlier. The stated goal of the Trump administration — and of Musk, to the extent he sticks around — is austerity: a relentless, spare-no-ox evisceration of budget lines, grant programs and entire agencies, notwithstanding the beneficiaries of the usual annual largesse. Will Congress bless (and share ownership of) such an aggressive approach? That’s no sure thing. A hit dog will holler, the saying goes. A member of Congress shouted down at a town hall by outraged voters might call the White House to beg for relief — or vote to keep spending money. How deep the administration’s push to curb federal spending goes – potentially undoing the foundation of what local government has chosen to fund in its own budgets – will depend on Trump’s willingness to make even his own supporters endure the cost. — Ted Mann | 
