There are few constants in life. Situations, people and life in general are constantly changing. Most creatures are either evolving or maturing, with one possible exception - movement conservatives. Movement conservatives never seem to change. They are perpetually mired in a never ending campaign of fear mongering. The latest boogey man they are trying to scare the public with is taxes, and they have even staged 'tea parties' mimicking the famous Boston Tea Party of 1773.
What is so curious about these 'tea parties' is that they are late in coming. For example, when Republican President George W. Bush and the Republican controlled Congress increased government spending and expanded the Federal Government between 2000 and 2006 - no tea party. Again when these same Republicans, took the billions of dollars of budget surplus left to him by a Democrat and turned it into billions of dollars of deficit - curiously, no tea party. In spite of the fact that Bush gave seventy percent of his famous 'tax cuts' to millionaires and big business, again - unconscionably - no tea party. Yet, when Democrat President Barack Obama and a Democratic controlled Congress recently gave ninety percent of working Americans a tax cut, guess what - a tea party.
I guess it only matters to conservatives when a Democrat is perceived to raises taxes or increases spending. Republicans can do it with impunity. I could go on and on, but I think you see the pattern here. It sounds a lot like just an old fashioned political stunt to me. Either that or it took movement conservatives eight years to figure out what was happening in Washington.
But, what's all the fuss about anyway? Wasn't it former Republican Vice-President Dick Cheney who said, "Reagan proved deficits don't matter"? Mr. Cheney must have been misquoted. What he really meant was that "Reagan proved Republican deficits don't matter".
Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX), who recently appeared on NBC's Meet the Press, claims that people are organizing these tea parties "because they are concerned where it [government spending] is going to go" and that folks don't believe that President Obama will, "hold the line on spending". Mr. Armey also claimed that "eventually every dime's worth of government spending is going to be taxation". Well Mr. Armey must have been home schooled in economics by the accountants at Enron because that last statement simply is not true.
When government spends to create jobs some of that money comes back to the government in two ways. First, someone who was sitting at home collecting unemployment is now working and secondly by working that individual will be paying taxes. Furthermore, I could site example after example of new technologies that have resulted from work that businesses and Federal agencies have done that was funded by the tax payers and have resulted in added value, jobs, productivity, and convenience to the American people and strengthened our economy. Government's taxation burden is lessened by the chain effect of a healthy economy when people are working, spending and by the savings and efficiency brought about through new and better products and procedures. Part of the cause of the admittedly astronomical deficits we are faced with now, on State as well as the Federal level, is due to reduced tax revenue as much if not more than increased spending.
Instead of trying to give relevance to hypothetical fears by a blanket protest of any policies put forth by Democrats, tea partiers should be providing relevant oversight on specific government projects whether they are proposed by Democrats or Republicans. What I am saying is that I am a supporter of President Obama's policies in a general way yet, I know that there will be questionable spending projects in this administration just as there has been in every other administration, at all levels, including State and Local - such as the Alaska's infamous 'Bridge to Nowhere' or the equally nonsensical "John Murtha Airport' (the Airport to Nowhere) and that is where 'tea parties' have relevancy.
Rather than staging vaudevillian publicity stunts and promoting economic practices that haven't been relevant since the Middle Ages, these 'tea parties' should be targeting the strictly politically motivated types of projects that don't have a broader benefit to taxpayers such as the two I previously mentioned. This would elevate their efforts from a side-show to actual benefit to the American people and in that vein I could then support them.
