This is not about the numbers.

This debt-limit debate has seen its fair share of numbers tossed around - 5.1 trillion - 2.7 trillion - 1.2 trillion - 14 trillion - lots of mind-bogglingly high numbers that we can’t wrap our heads around.

But the numbers aren’t what’s important here - it’s what’s really behind the numbers that matters.

Back in 2006 - Senator Obama said this about the business in Washington - and what it means for average Americans:

Just remember, as we move forward, that there are real consequences to the work that is being done here. There are people in places like Decatur, Illinois, or Galesburg, Illinois, who have seen their jobs eliminated. They have lost their health care. They have lost their retirement security. They don’t have a clear sense of how their children will succeed in the same way that they succeeded ... So there are real consequences to the work that is being done here. This is not a bloodless process.

Creating a budget is not a bloodless process.

As in - when Republicans cut up the federal budget - people WILL get hurt.

Cutting social security WILL hurt senior citizens.

Cutting Medicaid WILL hurt the sick and impoverished.

Cutting food assistance WILL hurt poor families.

We’re talking physical pain here - lingering sickness, starvation.

22 Americans died in last week's heat wave that scorched the very same states that cut critical government programs to help low-income families pay their electric bills.

Heat stroke is real pain.

And the Republicans know this.

That’s why yesterday - in an effort to rally their caucus behind more pain-inducing budget cuts - Republican leadership in the House played this clip from the movie “The Town” - take a look:.

Ben Affleck: I need your help. I can’t tell you what it is. You can never ask me about it later. And we’re going to hurt some people.

Jeremy Renner: Whose car are we going to take?

Again - this is a real clip that the real Republicans played to their caucus to whip up support for their painful budget cuts - you can't make this stuff up.

Later in the movie - those two characters you just saw go on to smash two guys with sticks and shoot another guy in the leg.

So who’s on board to do the same to the American people?

Sadly today - both parties appear to be - as it looks more and more likely that a cuts-only approach is going to resolve this debt-limit fiasco - giving the Republicans exactly what they wanted - the knives to cut up the American people.

One of the most important clauses in our Constitution is the General Welfare clause. It's in Article I - section 8. It reads:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States”.

Congress shall have the power to provide for the general welfare of the United States - it’s written right there in our Constitution.

And our founding fathers who wrote the General Welfare clause knew exactly what it meant.

That’s why George Washington was the very first president to sign legislation authorizing funds to provide housing, food, education and medical care to the poor in Washington, DC.

That’s why John Adams and Thomas Jefferson - our second and third presidents - continued that policy without a second thought.

That’s why the first veto of our fourth president, James Madison, the main author of the Constitution, was to kill a piece of legislation that moved the responsibility for caring and paying for the poor from the Federal Government to a church in DC.

Madison didn't believe the government should EVER give money to churches for any purpose, and that one of the most important jobs of the federal government was to catch those who fell through the social safety net - read his veto message.

He said he was vetoing the bill:

Because the bill vests in the said incorporated church an authority to provide for the support of the poor and the education of poor children of the same, ... carrying into effect a public and civil duty.

Not a religious duty, Madison was saying. In fact, he goes on at some length in his veto message, I encourage you to check it out. You can easily Google it.

Not a religious duty. A civic duty. It's OUR duty - We The People through our government - a public and civic or civil duty - to care for the General Welfare.

And members of the Democratic Party that Thomas Jefferson founded continue to promote the General Welfare of America when, for example, Franklin Roosevelt passed the New Deal and when Lyndon Johnson created the Great Society and cut poverty in half in the United States in about 4 years.

But Republican have always hated the General Welfare - they opposed the New Deal - they opposed Medicare - they filibustered things like unemployment benefits, food assistance programs - and now their outrageous demands in the debt-limit debate.

Republicans - with their Libertarian, Ayn Rand agenda, read the General Welfare clause differently than the founding fathers did.

They think the best way for the government to promote the general welfare is to get the hell out of the way.

Leave it up to the mythical “free market,” the billionaires, and the transnational corporations to promote the General Welfare.

Like health insurance corporations that use death panels to determine if your organ transplant will hurt their bottom line.

Like oil corporations that spew crude all over our oceans and suffocate us with emissions - as they laugh all the way to the bank with their record-breaking profits.

Like banksters who gamble with OUR money and crash the economy.

These are the great promoters of the General Welfare according to Republicans… NOT the government.

In the past - Democrats used to hold the line - they used to keep the general welfare clause protected from the grubby hands of Republicans who wanted to distort it.

But today - in both the House and Senate - as well as the White House, tragically - those General Welfare Democrats are hard to find.

The Republicans never liked that mandate that the founders put into the Constitution - that our government must protect and provide for the General Welfare of all the people - and now even a few Democrats have forgotten what it means when they say they're willing to "compromise" on core values like Social Security and Medicare.

And if some REAL Democrats don't stand up soon - and remind the rest of our lawmakers exactly what our founding fathers intended when they wrote the General Welfare clause into the Constitution - then Republicans are going to get away with hurting millions of Americans... as soon as they figure out what car to make their getaway with.

That's The Big Picture.