Whether you support or oppose House Republicans’ demands for hefty spending cuts as a condition of raising the country’s debt ceiling, there are some things to know when judging their commitment.

Perhaps the most important fact of all is this: While Speaker Kevin McCarthy likes to argue that his debt limit bill would break the Democrats

addiction in spending, the Republicans whose own hunger for spending is well established would be justly subjected

13%

of federal spending on the knife.

They have said they will exempt national defense, some veterans programs, Social Security and Medicare, which amounts to about half of all expenditures. As for the portion they focus on, called domestic discretionary spending, that relatively small portion of the total budget covers just about everything else the government does, and that’s what Americans expect it to do.

So the predictable has begun: Republicans are struggling to live up to their boast of easy cuts.

In short, they threaten the nations first

-ever

bankruptcy, and the chaos that would ensue, by demanding cuts that many of them don’t really want to become law.

We got evidence of the tightness this week, even as McCarthy, in his on-again, off-again debt ceiling negotiations with President Biden, was full of bravado for cutting the budget to reporters. Just before midnight on Monday midnight! the House Appropriations Committee canceled its Tuesday and Wednesday meetings as it was due to vote on the first of twelve bills that annually fund the federal government’s operations. Those bills must fill in the gory details of the cuts that Republicans left unidentified when they passed McCarthy’s debt limit bill last month.

The stated reason for the postponement: The majority of Republican committees wanted to give McCarthy maximum flexibility in his talks with Biden.

The real reason: They didn’t have the votes to pass their own bills. Failure, in turn, would have undermined McCarthy’s influence in the negotiations.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the senior Democrat on the committee, got her email at 11:53 p.m. canceling the meetings. She called it a sign of unraveling among Republicans, as the cuts they eventually specified are so stunning.

McCarthy’s debt curtailment bill calls for a 9% cut of the $1.6 trillion currently spent on annual discretionary spending. But with the Republicans’ promised exemptions for the Pentagon and some veterans programs, the cuts on what’s left on the table would be close to a devastating 30%.

Taking inflation into account, the discounts would be even greater.

Even then, the savings generated would be relatively small

the nation is sour

annual budget deficits. And Republicans, if they had their way, would indeed

effective

wiping out those savings by extending all the Trump-era tax cuts for another decade, adding trillions more to the federal debt they claim they fear.

So what’s included in the budget the Republicans want to allocate? The bills deadlocked by Republican infighting on the Appropriations Committee would cover agricultural spending, including farm subsidies and nutrition programs; border control and homeland security; a new program to help veterans exposed to wartime toxins; and the construction and maintenance of military facilities and housing, to name a few.

Also on the Republicans’ bloc in future credit bills: air traffic control; cancer and Alzheimer’s research; food on wheels; infrastructure in general; opioid treatments; Head Start; railway, food and drug safety; and much much more. although

while

Social Security and Medicare would not face cuts,

discounts,

good luck getting help once program staffing is reduced.

Washington cannot continue to spend money we don’t have at the expense of children and grandchildren, McCarthy tweeted. Still, more than their grandparents receiving Social Security and Medicare, children would be among the Americans most affected by the proposed cuts, and not just because of the cuts to education, nutrition, housing and health care programs that many of them now benefit from. .

At stake is the land they will inherit. Economists and tax experts view much of the expenditure at stake as seed corn investments in physical and human capital, with proven returns.

How the debt limit talks end up is a mystery. I am as concerned as the frightened right-wing pundits I quoted months ago approaching the June deadline when the Treasury says it will no longer be able to borrow to meet obligations from former presidents and congresses.

Republicans say they will not make concessions, that agreeing to raise the debt ceiling is concession enough. Real? Lifting the debt limit is their patriotic duty, especially given their complexity in pushing up the debt by a quarter of it during Donald Trump’s presidency.

I believe there are some members across the aisle who understand the hypocrisy here, DeLauro told me. But they’re not going to say anything.

And consider this: Republicans want to raise the debt limit just enough to allow the Treasury to borrow next spring. What then? They’re holding us for even more cuts.

That would be on top of those who already struggle to produce them, while the country is threatened with economic disaster.

@jackiekcalmes