The debt ceiling must be increased by midnight, Thursday, 17 October, or the United States of America begins defaulting on its debts. That will have dire economic consequences, and the longer the default lasts, the more dire the consequences will become.
Rep. Steve Daines won’t be adversely affected by those consequences immediately. He’s rich. If Wall Street panics, his portfolio will shrink, but he’ll have no difficulty paying for shelter, food, and medicine. No gain, perhaps, but also no pain.
But there’ll be pain aplenty for the old and impoverished, for people barely scraping by, living paycheck to paycheck. And if the default and shutdown last long enough, there will be death, especially in high elevation and high latitude states such as Montana where days now grow shorter and colder while the cost of staying warm goes up.
If Social Security payments are delayed, if funds for SNAP (food stamps), for the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, for help with heating, run out, the most vulnerable will find they must choose between food, medicine, and a warm place to live. Some will find money for two out of the three. For others, only one of the three will be possible.
Eventually, the hardships will take their toll. Some will catch fatal chills. Some will succumb to strokes or heart attacks that proper medication might have prevented. Others, always cold, in pain, in fear, increasingly bereft of hope, will take their own lives. The longer the shutdown and default last, the longer the roll of the dead, all sacrificed by Steve Daines and his cronies on the altar of lower taxes for the rich. That’s not politics as usual. That’s homicide.