Tea Party Tipping Point
Take it from Eric Cantor, no less: It’s time for the Congressional wrecking crew that damaged the nation’s credit to cool it.
The House Majority Leader, who helped derail his Speaker’s Grand Bargain on the debt limit, is now urging Tea Party followers not to sabotage next year’s spending bill
“I have heard some assert that certain sectors would be better off under the sequester,” he writes to members about the use of a device to force automatic spending cuts. “I believe this is false and would unnecessarily induce more uncertainty and a worse policy outcome.”
Cantor’s conversion to traditional legislative procedures may have something to do with the rising public anger against his zealot freshman with recent polls showing the Tea Party ranking lower in public approval than Democrats, Republicans and even Muslims and atheists.
As 2012 draws closer, Democrats are organizing to use that discontent with protests against Tea Party excesses at the ballot box and to pressure Congress to create a “super-committee” on job creation to supplement the one now in place on debt reduction.
In his Weekly Address, the President tries to get a running start against GOP opposition to the jobs plan he will unveil after Labor Day.
15 Responses to “Tea Party Tipping Point”
The T.P.’s manufactured debt ceiling crisis, especially coming at the same time as an acceleration of Europe’s debt crisis, has instigated the second dip in our double-dip recession. The market has rarely responded well to political malfunction.
So thanks, TP, for sending us back into the breach of recession/depression. Heck, maybe you can do it next year, too!
I think the $14 trillion dollar debt, the $1.5 trillion dollar deficit, and politicians idea that they can keep spending and it will have no effect on the economy is another reason why the credit rating of the U.S. was downgraded.
Does anyone doubt that the Democrats will eventually try to inflate their way out of paying off the debt? Does anyone question that the urge to default will eventually become overwhelming to politicians?
The biggest failure of the Tea Party is to actually enact any real budget cuts instead of pushing the problem into the future.
The reason polling numbers are down is that most people are just beginning to realize that the bill to the “free lunch” has come due.
SD Is there any time when you think excessive spending(with debt)is warranted? Is spending allowed during severe economic times or war? Was the Bush GWOT spending OK when we charged it on a Chinese CC? Does a severe recession or depression warrant any spending. Or is it just because you don’t like this flavor of Oreo?
Actually, it’s the short-term austerity fetishism and threatening default that caused the downgrade. See, superdestroyer, your dubious loyalty towards the poor and vulnerable as well as your obsession with cutting spending made recovery-harming policies popular, and emboldened the teenage libertarians in congress to make threats of default an acceptable tactic. Hence, lower grade. YOU failed, congress only followed your example.
It’s true Obama boosted spending (with good reason). And guess what, bond-holders (the people whose money depends on grading debtors) still had no problems with it.
But then the usual vermin started admonishing us, demanding tighter belts and the other tropes of asceticism intended to appeal to the weak people’s need for a patriarchal figure, and you, Logan and the other cattle started wetting your beds while having nightmares about the deficit. So we are trying austerity again, which will never work. Thanks for destroying the prospects of my generation, you generic, middle-aged dupes.
Keynesian economics does not work in an interconnect world economy. The deficit spending during the first year of the Obama Administration was not used to spur private sector employment but was used for bloated state and local government payrolls. thus, it did not help the long term economy but was just a short term pay off to the public sector unions.
Since the U.S. is competing in a world economy, there is no margin that can be used to pay off the public sector unions or to support the parasite class.
The left has had 70 years to demonstrate that they can do Keynesian economics and they always fail. Keynesian economics requires cutting government and higher taxes during the good times to pay off the debt and to limit the size of the government.
Since no one seems capable of cutting back on programs during the good times, then the U.S. should not do Keynesian economics.
What the U.S. needs to do is to limit spending so that it does not run up such massive debt during economic downturns. The government should also limit spending during the boom times and create massive rainy day funds to off set any spending required during the bust part of the cycles.
What the Tea Party types are most mad about is the inability of the Republicans, once again, to deliver on the promise of smaller government and less spending. Bush failed to deliver smaller government and now Speaker Boehner is failing. If the Republicans are doing to refuse to be fiscal conservatives, then there no reason for the Republican Party to exist.
SD Are deep recession and wars reasons for spending by an economic and military world power? Small government during WW2 sounds like a starting point. How many years did it take to bring down that debt?
During Vietnam there was a war tax. Was fighting Communism a valid reason for debt?
P[lease answer the questions without the DLS type liberal attack.
This debt has a twenty year history. Do we need an overnite fix?
Rudi, it doesn’t matter whether it’s “time” or not, our ammo has been spent. In the Great Depression I, we had relatively small debts to deal with. Now, our debt is already over 100% of GNP (depending on which version of “debt” and “GNP” you use), and our deficit was already huge coming into the crisis.
If a trillion is too small to make a difference, then the amount required is going to be rejected by the markets. Just like businesses and people, there are limits to what the government can borrow.
Rudi,
Unless a country is borrowing money from sources outside the country, there is no economic difference betweening taxing or borrowing. Actually taxing would be better since the costs are fully accounted for in that year.
Of if there is a war, the government should just raise taxes to fund the war. In a recession, the goal should be to get the private sector to grow back as fast as possible. Hiring people for the public sector and clamping down on the private sector makes no sense during a recession but that is what occurred in 2009.
If a government needs money, it should tax the money and force the voters to pay full retail for the privledge of getting the government’s services. Borrowing money to fund routine operations is a huge mistake and is why the Tea Party types are so upset.
SD claimed:
Of if there is a war, the government should just raise taxes to fund the war.Please show me where the W 43 administration raised taxes for the GWOT. I recall a Bush Tax Cut, but please link to the GWOT Surcharge.
I will acknowledge the debt is a problem. But why wasn’t it a problem during Republican administrations. When the economy turns around, I’d welcome an end to the Bush tax cuts with some help with payroll taxes for the working middle class and working poor.
Rudi,
It was a problem during the Bush Administraiton. Even groups like moveon.org though it was a problem during the Bush Adminstration. See http://civic.moveon.org/cbs//durbin.html
That is one of the reasons that Republicans lost in 2006 and 2008 and Bush left office with a 20% approval rating.
Bush should have raised a war tax and if the war was not important enough to have a war tax, then it was not important enough to fight to begin with.
Letting the temporary tax cuts expire is not enough to make up for the massive amount of spending that the government does. The Bush tax cuts may put back at most $400 billion a year put the government is running a $1.5 trillion dollar annual deficit and the Obama Administration is planning on expanding entitlements and maintaining open borders.
As the Democrats become the one, dominate party, the urge to inflate the debt away will become irresistible to the core groups of the Democratic Party. Why? Becuase those groups are economically decoupled from the private sector so much that they do not care how bad it will be for everyone else.
You don’t see a lot of American cars around the world, but you see Toyotas and Mercedes just about everywhere. The same for about every American product, you just don’t se them much.
The Republican answer is to lower wages to match foreign wages. Ok, Lower my wage to the German wage please and while you are at it, throw in the same healthcare system too. Lets not leave out that retirement at age 58, I REALLY like that one.
From my view there are far too many working people in this country who come home sore and tired after working their shift (for not much more than minimum wage)and then have the near impossible task of translating that paltry incomes into food and shelter. These folks certainly aren’t getting any “free lunch”, all they’re getting is worked hard and paid less. Meanwhile, we have the pampered and coddled 20% who control 80% of the wealth in this country who to all intents and purposes don’t really don’t care about anything but moolah. So who is getting this “free lunch”???
JSpencer,
One of the unspoken reasons why stretching one’s pay is the amount of money it takes to avoid living in the “bad neighborhoods.” Yet, the government through its education, welfare, and immigraiton policies seems intent on expanding the “bad neighborhoods” and eliminating as many “good” neighborhoods as possible.
Why do you think all of the white hipsters want to live in a place like Portland where the unemployment rate for whites is well above the national average for whites but refuse to move to cities like San Antonio, Houston, or other “diverse” cities.
Cantor is just posturing to keep the rickety unsustainable situation going long enough to get re-elected in 2012 (and to keep the stupid hordes who worship the federal government, or who believe it is their parent, in check). Sometimes I’m inclined to state that these people rival business management and Wall Street in being short-term oriented. All that’s missing is to have quarterly rather than biennial or longer-term elections for the principal federal officials.
Where will all these people be when entitlement reform can’t be postponed any longer, but is forced on Washington, and someday the rationalization and correct of governments and expectations from them, not just their affordability, is also forced? No doubt many liberals resent those questions every time they’re asked, but it’s the real world, for liberals and so-called conservative politicians who want to ride the gravy train while it’s as big as it is and keeps running.
Actually we haven’t, people in the top 20% to top 5% range (Your Doctors, Lawyers, CPAs and assorted Professionals) are slightly better off today than they were in the 70′s. Most of the income & wealth gains have gone to the top .5% of the income distribution.