What is the Tea Party platform?

by philg

Today I was asked two questions about the Tea Party: Am I afraid of it? Do they propose to cut spending or only to cut taxes?

My answer to the fear question was “How much worse could they do than the established parties, which have started (and continue to choose to fight) two expensive wars and strangled the nation’s economy?”

My answer to the second question was “I’m not sure”. A big of Googling brought up http://www.thecontract.org/the-contract-from-america/, which seems to me to be the closest thing that there is to a “tea party platform”. The “contract” implies some serious spending cuts by including both “Demand a Balanced Budget” and “Stop the Tax Hikes”. The federal government now spends approximately $1.5 trillion more than it takes in and the U.S. economy isn’t growing. Therefore, a balanced budget without tax hikes would require eliminating a lot of popular government programs, such as the military, Medicare, Medicaid, and huge cuts to others, such as Social Security. The Tea Partiers have left this inconvenient truth out of their contract, so it is hard to say what the Tea Party is actually advocating.

Taking it down to the household level, imagine a person saying loudly “We are going to cut spending so as to achieve a balanced budget” but won’t say whether the cell phones are to be ditched, the cable TV service terminated, or whether he or she proposes to move to a cheaper apartment.

[The other question government-related question I was asked this evening regarded Social Security. I said that if the current generation of retirees got more back from Social Security than they put in, necessarily some retirees in the future would have to get back less. The only way to avoid that would be a permanent Ponzi scheme in which we grew the U.S. population to be larger than the Earth’s (so that there was always an expanding number of workers to pay off promises to retirees). That said, it has proved difficult for me to substantiate the actual return on investment for current Social Security recipients. This 1996 article says that an average male retiree in 1980 got back 3.7 times more than his contributions would have earned if they’d been invested in bonds; an average female retiree got back 4.4 times due to longer life expectancy. A more nuanced perspective comes from this Cato Institute article, which shows that medium earners got only a couple of percentage points better than in government bonds (though a slight premium adds up over a 40-year career and this article is from the mid-1990s, before the “lost decade” for investors in U.S. securities).]

12 thoughts on “What is the Tea Party platform?”

  1. Yes, the really nice thing about being a leaderless, grassroots national mass movement is that you don’t have to produce a budget. On the other hand, it seems that Paul Ryan is regarded as a Tea Party figure, and he does have apparently detailed proposals.

  3. Apropos of the first question: Glen Urquhart, the Tea Party’s Republican nominee for Congress in Delaware, claims the phrase “separation of church and state” originated not with Jefferson but with Hitler, and that liberals who endorse that separation are therefore Nazis.

    “Do you know, where does this phrase ‘separation of church and state’ come from? It was not in Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists. … The exact phrase ‘separation of Church and State’ came out of Adolph Hitler’s mouth, that’s where it comes from. So the next time your liberal friends talk about the separation of Church and State ask them why they’re Nazis.”
    –Glen Urquhart

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/09/gop-candidate-hitler-church-state/

    “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”
    –Thomas Jefferson’s Letter to the Danbury Baptists

  4. M.B.: Thanks for the Paul Ryan link. His government spending chart is misleading. He shows only federal outlays in “government spending”. Thus when his chart shows “government spending” hitting 50 percent of GDP, including state and local government spending would make it more like 70 or 80 percent of GDP (we really have no way of calculating this since we don’t know how long retired state and local government workers will live and therefore continue to draw inflation-adjusted pension checks). Ryan’s roadmap (http://www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/solution/roadmapsolutions.htm ) does not propose to cut Medicare spending ($11,000 per year per person), but only change the procedure by which it is spent. For Social Security, Ryan says “individuals 55 and older will remain in the current system and will not be affected by this proposal in any way” and then “all other workers will have a choice to stay in the current system or begin contributing to personal accounts”. This doesn’t make any sense to me. The only way that Social Security can remain solvent is if all current workers contribute a healthy slice of their paycheck to pay for those who are receiving checks (in fact we probably need to bring in tens of millions of immigrant workers to have any hope of paying the promised benefits). Saying “folks 55 and older will live in a pre-Collapse of 2008 Bubble” is equivalent to saying “we’re going to continue down our current road for the next 26 years or so” [life expectancy for a 55-year-old is approximately 26 additional years (source), though of course advances in medical technology could increase that to 35, 40, 50, or even more]. Ryan’s roadmap does not mention the military or what he proposes to do about our adventures in propping up Afghanistan and Iraq (i.e., taxing poor people in the U.S. to help rich people in Afghanistan). So… Ryan’s proposal may be “detailed” but the details themselves are insignificant compared to the scale of the funding shortfall. U.S. government spending and commitments are scaled for an economy that is roughly twice as big as the U.S. economy; state and local government pension obligations similarly wouldn’t be so bad if the U.S. had double the amount of income generated every year. None of our politicians seem willing to look voters in the eye and say “You taxpayers are not as productive as we thought you’d be, so we’re going to have to tear down half of the palace.”

    Erich: Ouch! That chart is painful. It looks like the big disconnect was 9/11 and our government’s response to it (King Bush II’s prescription drug welfare plan for Big Pharma did not help either, I’m sure). I wonder if historians will end up dividing up U.S. history into “Pre-Civil War, Post-Civil War, Post-WWII, and Post-9/11” as the major periods.

    Gary: Thanks for the link. I checked http://www.wintersonnenwende.com/scriptorium/english/archives/articles/NSChristianity.html says the Nazis had a “commitment to a strict separation of church and state”. This confirms my theory that if Hitler had not invaded Russia he would have been considered the greatest European statesman of the 20th Century. It does seem as though this Urquhart guy exhibits an inability to use Google: http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html is easily found and has the letter in question with the phrase being used by Jefferson. His Web site (http://www.glenforliberty.com/) indicates that he has 5 children and 14 grandchildren. He is thus one of the few who can claim that he is keeping the Social Security Ponzi scheme afloat! Perhaps we should give him credit for that, despite his inability to use Google.

  5. philg wrote: “[artcle] says the Nazis had a ‘commitment to a strict separation of church and state’.”

    The article does say that, but does not use those words in anything like the sense under discussion here (nor does it attribute those words, or any translation thereof, to the Nazis themselves). As that very article confirms, the Nazis’ sense of religious freedom extended only to the various denominations of Christianity. Their sense of “separation” included a state prohibition of political speech by churches! Oh and they tried to eradicate Judaism and Jews. So not exactly like our First Amendment.

  6. What is the Tea Party platform? I’d say there isn’t one. In a way, I find that comforting. These people can’t be any worse than the current batch of parasites, republican and democrat alike, that presently infest congress. It always seems politicians have some contrived “plan” or whatever to sell. Usually, these plans are all bad ideas as they are almost always some new way to regulate and/or tax. Very few politicians come to power via, “I want to abolish X, Y and Z.”

    Currently, the overwhelming majority Tea Partiers are mostly disgruntled republicans that are distrustful of the party establishment. Still, there are two distinct blocks within this group that need to be recognized. The majority are disgruntled republicans, and the minority (for lack of a better term) Paulians. The Paulians are a very small minority and in the lens of mainstream media, their rhetoric has been completely submersed by the Disgruntleds. (Disgruntleds are louder, madder, and make for better copy.)

    Originally, this was not so. The “Tea Party” was originally a internet fund-raising drive by the supporters of Ron Paul during the republican primary campaigns in late 2007. These people would best be described as “classical” liberals that believed in markets, civil liberties, strict constitutionalism and were anti-war. Admittedly, there were a few nuts, and maybe these people were impractical, but the were the most logically consistent in terms of policy and philosophy. Most important, I think, is that they understood economics, whereas most political types have no concept of it.

    What has happened is that large swaths of republicans, hating the bailouts and spending of Bush, got even more mad because of Obama’s equally stupid interventions. These people subscribe to a mix of philosophies. They have neo-con views on foreign policy (war, war, and more war with a police state on the side) and desire to impose some form of christian values on the country. What they dislike is any unnecessary spending, bailouts, anything that harms small business, and increasing taxes. Sadly, they have nothing to say about stupidly expensive wars, cronyism, military contractors and oil companies.

    Too much reading is required for the general population to even understand what the Paulians are about. I think the Tea Partiers that get in office will not be of the reasoned Paulian type. And these people, while still being in my opinion bad, will be better than the current congress on domestic policies. On foreign policy, I am a bit more worried. There doesn’t seem to be a strong resistance to stupid wars and that is disturbing. Trillions of dollars have already been lost, trillions more is not going to help.

    Personally, I’m not going to vote. It really doesn’t matter in a country with a population this large anyway. Statistically, I have a better chance of being killed on the way to the polls than of actually making a difference in the election. Besides, I’m still waiting for the candidate that wants to end all the wars, close all 700 or so overseas military bases, cut the military budget by 90%, and abolish Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the IRS, the SEC, the FDA, the FTC, the FCC, and the Depts of Homeland Security, Energy, Education, Labor, Housing, Commerce, Agriculture, and Transportation. I guess you can call me “pie in the sky” man.

  7. I think that Tea Party’ers are more about axioms that are (considered to be ) broadly true, and that government should incorporate those views when governing.

    So for instance, “no country has ever taxed its way into prosperity” – a politician asking for Tea Party fans to vote for him would get broad agreement on this view should he verbalize that. Obviously Paul Krugman would be less likely to agree with this viewpoint…

    Others might be “government should not be picking which businesses win or lose” (too big to fail banks, nationalizing auto companies) and “we should not be paying poor people to have children while taxing rich people who have children” (since rich people will presumably help their children succeed economically, while poor people will perpetuate poverty and poor decision making).

  8. ‘separation’ has to be the most … imprecise translation of Gleichschaltung ever offered. Boy, I’m glad I wasn’t at work when I followed that link. As a movement devoted to the Total State, the National Socialist approach to church-state relations (see for example the German Evangelical Church) didn’t take as a guiding light religious freedom or the separation of church and state, though it did sometimes involve the separation of head and shoulders.

  10. Regarding Patrick’s comment, I feel it is appropriate for the average person to chose a leader based upon whatever fundamental principles he is attempting to adhere to. What else can the average person be expected to do? It is important that we each have some say, some part in government. How else would you expect that to occur?

    I have wondered recently if the “issues” aren’t a distraction from what is really important. It seems to me that both sides (assuming you believe there are two parties) are attempting to legislate morality to their own ends. I think the only thing we can afford to focus on right now is economics–what will make us prosper once again. I sense that this is tied quite directly to freedom for individuals; isn’t that central to what the founder’s were grappling with in the first place?

  11. I am the average person, but I have this nagging, over-arching sensation that “the big picture”, the fundamentals of government and the way it operates (and specifically how it affects the economy), are what we should be focusing on right now, as opposed to whether our gay neighbors should be allowed to marry, or whether to build a mosque at ground zero, or even how utterly selfish and worthless I am because I would rather keep the money I earn than share it.

  12. Hi Phil,
    Wow, long time no see… I was googling for a ‘platform of the tea party’ because I suspect my husband may be a closet member and your blog entry was the best hit. If you are interested in lots of concrete ways to shrink the ever expanding budget, you should ‘like’ Bankrupting America on facebook or subscribe to http://www.bankruptingamerica.org/. There are some non-insignificant completely ridiculous programs we sink federal dollars into.

    As for social security, what a nightmare. From what I understand, your assessment that it is a government-run ponzi scheme is fairly accurate. Just like any entitlement, once the government offers it, it is almost impossible to extricate itself from it (hence why Libertarians question whether the government should really be in the business of health care).

    Anyway, though I guess I am still a registered democrat, I have been pretty well-brainwashed to the libertarian point of view and am now stuck with a deep loathing of both republicans and democrats. I think that is the main appeal of the Tea Party; that it is neither of those.

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