WASHINGTON, DC - If Congress fails to raise the debt limit before August 2 the United States’s credit rating will almost certainly be downgraded and interest rates will jump. Without the ability to borrow, the federal government will have no choice but to immediately cut the payments it is obligated to make by 40 percent. This will threaten Social Security benefits, active-duty military pay, Medicare and Medicaid payments, and all other federal activities, from law enforcement to education to health care. The American economy will quickly be plunged back into recession if the federal government is unable to meet a significant portion of these obligations.

That nightmarish scenario will affect all Americans from coast to coast. But the Tri Caucus pointed out last week—the Congressional Black Caucus, Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and the Congressional Asian Pacific Caucus—that the aftershocks from Congress’s failure to raise the debt ceiling will be particularly painful for people of color. The federal government would be forced to immediately discontinue vital services relied upon disproportionately by lower-income and minority households under any likely scenario of what might happen if the debt limit isn’t increased.

No one knows for sure which payments could be made. Still, a Bipartisan Policy Center analysis shows that if the Treasury Department were to put incoming revenues toward defense spending, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and unemployment insurance the federal government would be forced to make substantial cuts to programs that help the disadvantaged (not to mention canceling many other payments, including tax refunds, federal worker paychecks, and many other obligations of the government). Cuts to these programs will be felt more by persons of color since a greater percentage of African-American and Hispanic households live in poverty.

Just consider a sampling of some of the programs and services the federal ...