Death by a Million Cuts: What Cities Stand to Lose If We Go Over the Fiscal Cliff

The on again, off again threat of the fiscal cliff has put municipal governments in a decidedly awkward position. How should they prepare for legislation designed not to minimize pain, but rather to be too hurtful to ever enact? "It's hard to know what the impact of a law that gets described as shooting yourself in the head will be," says Kim Rueben, a senior policy analyst at the Urban Institute.

Even so, cities are doing their best to quantify the very tangible effects of proposed cuts in dollars and cents. Last week, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake held a press conference with acting U.S. Secretary of Commerce Rebecca Blank, imploring Congress to do something. "It will hurt consumer confidence and hit discretionary spending in the retail and tourism sectors, two pillars of growth here in Baltimore," Rawlings-Blake said. "And that means it will hurt jobs in our economy."