Our Repub­li­can mem­bers of the Unit­ed States House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives offer up press releas­es and tweets every day of the year pay­ing trib­ute to America’s ser­vice­mem­bers and vet­er­ans, stress­ing a country’s oblig­a­tions and grat­i­tude to the men and women who don the uni­form in defense of the nation.

Those same Repub­li­can House mem­bers recent­ly vot­ed for a bill that would cut spend­ing for the U.S. Depart­ment of Vet­er­ans Affairs by twen­ty-two per­cent the com­ing fis­cal year. The hostage-tak­ing scheme is a means of extract­ing destruc­tive con­ces­sions in exchange for vot­ing to raise the debt ceil­ing so the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment can pay its bills for spend­ing already approved.

“Peo­ple who reg­u­lar­ly read my newslet­ter know that I am not a par­ti­san bomb-throw­er, but the cuts pro­posed by my Repub­li­can col­leagues would mean gut­ting law enforce­ment, food safe­ty and vital sup­port for work­ing fam­i­lies across Wash­ing­ton state,” said Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Derek Kilmer, D‑Washington, writ­ing to con­stituents. Kilmer rep­re­sents the 6th Dis­trict in the House.

As the clock clicks down on debt oblig­a­tions, we are wak­ing up to the con­se­quences of Repub­li­cans’ fis­cal demands. Any eval­u­a­tion goes beyond hyper­bole, both in the stock mar­ket crash and loss of mil­lions of jobs like­ly result­ing from a default, but also for impacts of Repub­li­can-cham­pi­oned cuts on the state and fed­er­al ser­vices such as those pro­vid­ed by Vet­er­ans Affairs.

Bud­gets are big news and a big deal in oth­er coun­tries, antic­i­pat­ed and talked about in such coun­tries as Cana­da and Great Britain. Gov­ern­ments stand and fall on their pri­or­i­ties. Here, the President’s bud­get pro­pos­al is briefly kissed off as unre­al­is­tic before we turn our atten­tion to the lat­est scan­dals and mul­ti­ple killings.

Bud­gets have con­se­quences. Or as Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Susan Del­Bene, D‑Washington, put it, “With each pass­ing day, Repub­li­cans’ polit­i­cal games cre­ate more uncer­tain­ty for fam­i­lies and the glob­al econ­o­my.” Trans­la­tion, the House Repub­li­cans have set an enor­mous price on avert­ing an enor­mous catastrophe.

I went over that “total­ly unac­cept­able” price on the phone with Mary Karzyn­s­ki, direc­tor of gov­ern­ment affairs for VoteVets.org, an orga­ni­za­tion of pro­gres­sive vet­er­ans work­ing for a bet­ter future for Amer­i­ca. Of course, default has the poten­tial to deny vet­er­ans’ ben­e­fits alto­geth­er. But the Repub­li­cans’ price to keep that from hap­pen­ing would mean cut­ting los­ing $2 bil­lion from the Amer­i­can Res­cue Plan and can­cel­ing $365 mil­lion in major con­struc­tion projects.

The pric­etag of pro­posed cuts to the Depart­ment of Vet­er­ans Affairs totals some $30 bil­lion. Vet­er­ans would find them­selves unable to sched­ule well­ness vis­its, but also can­cer appoint­ments, men­tal health treat­ments, sub­stance abuse treat­ments, and a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of VA ser­vices. The Vet­er­ans Ben­e­fit Admin­is­tra­tion would cut its staff by more than 6,000 peo­ple, wors­en­ing wait time by adding 1134,000 claims to the dis­abil­i­ty claims backlog.

“Don’t believe any­one who says these are dra­con­ian lim­its,” House Speak­er Kevin McCarthy said not long ago, explain­ing that VA would con­tin­ue to oper­ate at 2022 lev­els. But as Seat­tle-based VoteVets orga­niz­er Rick Heg­dahl (a for­mer Pres­i­dent of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute) points out, there are going to be more vet­er­ans and more health care demands. Con­gress has recent­ly extend­ed ben­e­fits to ser­vice mem­bers exposed to tox­ic smoke from burn pits here and abroad.

Rick Heg­dahl, a for­mer Pres­i­dent of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute and an orga­niz­er with VoteVets.org, jour­neyed to our nation’s cap­i­tal to ral­ly oppo­si­tion to destruc­tive cuts to vet­er­ans’ care (Pho­to: Rick Heg­dahl, VoteVets.org)

Sim­i­lar­ly, con­se­quences of pro­posed bud­get cuts run up and down the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, poten­tial­ly punch­ing more holes in an already-frayed social safe­ty net. A mem­ber of the House Ways and Means Com­mit­tee, Del­Bene recent­ly com­piled a list of painful cuts the Repub­li­can bud­get would inflict on the state of Wash­ing­ton State.

A total of 4,800 pre-school and child care slots would be elim­i­nat­ed. A whop­ping 182,000 Wash­ing­to­ni­ans would lose food assis­tance. We’d see 80,000 stu­dents see the cost of col­lege go up. We’d have 17,000 Wash­ing­ton fam­i­lies feel an increase in hous­ing costs. And 164,500 vet­er­ans could lose med­ical care.

A whop­ping 1.5 mil­lion seniors would have to wait at least two months longer for Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare assistance.

Joel Ryan, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Wash­ing­ton State Head Start, explained what the Repub­li­cans’ attacks on essen­tial pub­lic ser­vices would do to kids: “Head Start pro­grams will be forced to slash enroll­ment, cut staff and dilute ser­vices just as the needs of our low­est income preschool chil­dren and their fam­i­lies have expe­ri­enced dis­rupt­ed learn­ing dur­ing the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Such cuts are part of Repub­li­cans’ DNA, even as they lion­ize the military.

Some years back, the sec­ond Bush admin­is­tra­tion sought to close the VA’s Jonathan Wain­wright Med­ical Cen­ter in Wal­la Wal­la. The shut­down was stopped after Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray and the local VFW post staged a rau­cous hear­ing. Vet­er­ans Admin­is­tra­tion brass heard vets explain how they would have to dri­ve two hun­dred-plus miles to Seat­tle, Port­land or Spokane for need­ed treatment.

All eight of this state’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic House mem­bers vot­ed against the Repub­li­cans’ “Default on Amer­i­ca Act,” the name giv­en to it by Democ­rats. The delegation’s two Repub­li­cans, Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers (CMR) and Dan New­house, cast Yea votes. As chair of the House Ener­gy and Com­merce Com­mit­tee, McMor­ris Rodgers was also over­see­ing a Repub­li­can-spon­sored ener­gy bill through floor passage.

The ener­gy plan extends gen­er­ous fed­er­al sub­si­dies to the oil and gas indus­try, already enjoy­ing mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar prof­its. CMR has made it a touch­stone to vote against the needs of con­stituents in her needy East­ern Wash­ing­ton district.

We need to pay more atten­tion to budgets.