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Congress has just a few voting days left to pass a budget plan that will avert a government shutdown before it faces another major hurdle — the looming debt ceiling — in mid-October.

This double-whammy could have major implications for Hawaii, including for local schools and universities that are highly dependent on federal funding.

Hawaii is already feeling the broadening effects of the budget sequester. A growing array of cuts is triggered by a pre-specified timetable that continues to chip away at federally funded Hawaii Department of Education and University of Hawaii programs. But the state’s education funding also risks cuts as a result of a fierce, politically charged battle in Congress over the federal budget and additional pressure as federal spending approaches the $16.4 trillion government debt limit.

To avert a government shutdown, Congress needs to agree on a spending bill by Sept. 30, although a — a band-aid fix that many Republicans oppose — seems possible. Soon after that, lawmakers will need to raise the debt ceiling or let the government default on its loans, which would hurt the country’s credit rating and significantly increase the cost of future borrowing. That, in turn, could lead to even more cuts.

The last-minute federal budget debates leave state education officials and policymakers perplexed about what the future holds for education here.

“It’s really up in the air … because it’s sheer politics,” said state Rep. Roy Takumi, who chairs the House education committee.

In the coming days, Civil Beat will examine how the potential funding cuts might harm specific education programs in Hawaii. But for now, here are some of the broad potential affects for both K-12 and higher education.

At the K-12 level, Takumi pointed to a wide range of important programs and line items that could take a hit, including an estimated 130 or so federally funded DOE positions, school improvement grants, special education services and Impact Aid, which provides subsidies that are meant to offset the cost of educating military dependents.

Takumi also stressed the potential cuts could have particularly harsh repercussions for public schools because the state’s four-year $75 million Race to the Top grant is slated to end next July.

Meanwhile, on the higher education side, other policy analysts expect federally funded research — a sector that UH is aggressively working to expand — to be on the chopping block. Experts also fear longer-term repercussions on student federal financial aid and loan programs that help finance schooling for a large percentage of Hawaii college students. (Roughly one in four students enrolled at UH in the 2011-12 school year received Pell Grants, which are tuition subsidies for low-income students, while 20 percent received federal loans.)

Takumi and other lawmakers intend to hold an informational briefing before the legislative session kicks off that will be specifically devoted to federal education budget issues. That briefing would give legislators a better idea of how the state will to respond to more potential federal cutbacks and what sorts of contingency plans might come into play.

While most education spending comes from state budgets, federal aid subsidizes a range of key programs and services, from Title I grants for schools serving low-income students to graduate research subsidized by agencies such as the National Science Foundation.

Nationally, the federal government contributed a total of roughly $138 billion to education, or less than 4 percent of its entire budget during the 2013 fiscal year, according to the , a nonpartisan policy think tank that’s done . Federal funding accounts for a larger percentage of education spending in Hawaii than it does in most other states, in part because of the large population of military dependents.

E. Wyatt Gordon, a consultant who’s currently pursuing a master’s degree in education policy at Columbia University’s Teachers College, speculated that Congress will likely choose to prioritize its education funding by paying out — which means not cutting down on — some programs while postponing allocations for others. Programs such as those earmarked for disadvantaged students, including Title I and Pell grants, would probably be the ones postponed, he argued.

“You’ll see them pay out programs that are less likely to be argued on partisan lines,” he told Civil Beat.

The students who have the fewest resources are typically the ones who suffer the most when there are budget cutbacks, Gordon said.

Federal budget reductions often force school districts to downsize supplemental education programs. Ultimately, that could mean less individualized attention for special education and cuts to after-school programs. Gordon also expects both school districts and universities to implement more accountability measures as a way to validate certain cuts.

Meanwhile, federal dollars also enter the University of Hawaii at both an institutional level — , for example — and through its students, over half of whom are , much of it from the federal government.

Nationally, student financial aid accounts for the in higher education. Loans accounted for $107.4 billion, or about 60 percent, of the available aid, while grants for lower-income students made up $35.9 billion, or about 20 percent, of it. The rest of the aid came in the form of tax benefits and the federal work-study program.

But Gordon suggested that federally subsidized student loans, or Stafford loans, are “a dying breed,” pointing to recent disputes that nearly resulted in the doubling of interest rates before Congress agreed on a way to keep them low.

He said that the loans may end up as “a sacrifice” to end the budget ordeal.

And UH is already feeling the squeeze of sequestration on the institutional side. University research staff told Civil Beat that, in general, its outside funding has been cut by roughly 7 percent.