TEA Party Principles: Stop the spending, Fiscal Responsibility, Free Markets, Rule of Law
We worked hard to get the best people in place that would carry those principles forward. This IS the defining moment – do we let the Progressives ruin us financially, making our kids and grandkids slaves to the debt they have poured onto us, or do we stop the insanity and stop the growth of government?
Which translates to: will the Republicans, especially in the House, stand on principle or will it be the usual DC compromise? Read this from Cato and you can easily guess:
The Boehner plan also doesn’t cut spending in a more fundamental way. It doesn’t lay out any particular programs or agencies to terminate. I’m in favor of spending caps as a secondary enforcement mechanism, but actual cuts have to come first. A caps-only plan like Boehner’s just kicks the can down the road. At best, it simply nudges future legislators to actually cut something specific.
Why doesn’t the House leadership propose real cuts? They’ve certainly got the resources and expertise to do the job. A single senator — Tom Coburn — produced a 620-page report last week detailing hundreds of programs to cut and terminate. Coburn and his staff read through thousands of articles and reports on the real-world performance of federal programs, and they made a good case for each particular cut they proposed.
So, does the below chart show that DC has gotten the message and stopped the spending via the Boehner plan? No Current deficit spending is $1.5 Trillion (give or take). Does the Boehner plan stop the bleeding? No. The Rs are touting $3 TRILLION CUTS! Er, over 10 years. Translation – $300 Billion / year. That’s IF later Congress’s stick to it…they don’t have to. This STILL means deficit spending of $1.2 Trillion / year.
This is not what the TEA Party fought for in November – just more of the same with the Rs not convinced they have the power (even as the House Rs control the actual Purse Strings) to stand up and stand strong. Once again, we see the wimp factor snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Once again, we see the GOP action (their votes) failing to meet their philosophy (limited government).
With no respect meant for Harry Reid, this is the reason why I would have chuckled to himself ("those rube Republicans – I STILL get to spend lots!")":
(H/T: Cato)
Even more charts showing in what bad shape we are in here.
They were sent to do a job –
– their votes on raising the Debt Ceiling will let us know whether or not they accomplished what they were sent to do. If they vote to raise that limit (thus allowing even more spending, even as the "cuts" are merely ephemeral rhetoric), we will need to let them know that Decisions have Consequences.
Remember, it is not just breaching the debt ceiling that is the problem – S&P, one of the three major rating companies, has said that a downgrade will happen if it does not see a solid plan to cut $4 Trillion dollars because of the sheer size of the date.
We will, like Greece, undergo an austerity plan. The question is wither or not our politicians can reasonably do it, or if they keep acting like dufuses in disregarding the danger, having the marketplace do it for them.
My bet? Our high level, simply stupendously smart politicians will carry the day again and punt. And the marketplace will be absolutely ruthless in carrying out and force restructuring that the chuckleheads refuse to do.
Once again, showing that they have outsourced their responsibility to others because they refuse to take on the really hard decisions.
When Lord Halifax and a handful of other influential members of the war cabinet were building support to seek peace terms with Hitler through the Italians, Churchill reminded them that “nations which went down fighting rose again, but those which surrendered tamely were finished.” The same may be said for the Republican Party today; if it surrenders to Obama, it may as well pack it in for good.
Churchill concluded his statement to the cabinet that day with these words: “If our long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.” For Churchill, it wasn’t a matter of keeping office; life itself wasn’t worth living if the struggle wasn’t won. It was a huge risk on Churchill’s part. But it was the only noble course. It is not possible to guarantee victory, Churchill said at other times; it is only possible to deserve it. For Republicans at this moment, it ought not to be worth keeping office if they surrender.
To extend the analogy, recall Churchill’s words about the RAF after the Battle of Britain: Never have so many owed so much to so few. Today the Tea Party-influenced members of Congress, and a few long-time stalwarts like Sen. Jim Demint, are the few who stand in the way of fiscal Armageddon. Let us hope that at some point down the road from here we can say the same thing about the Tea Party members of Congress that Churchill said of the RAF.
Live Free or Die…Death is not the worst of all evils.
