Tea Party
The popular bumper sticker “Tea Parties are for Little Girls with Imaginary Friends” would be funny if it were not so spot-on. Too many Tea Party members in Washington believe millions of imaginary voters agree with them. Due to Congressional approval ratings lower than tax day, even imaginary voters may stay home election day. The anguish we endure every time the Tea Party throws a tantrum and threatens to blow up our economy due to magical thinking coupled with ignorance so vast and deep, is tiring.
The current unpleasantness brings to mind a certain other tea party where the Mad Hatter, who I imagine resembles John Boehner, but less orange, holds court. To quote Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit, “when logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead” pretty much sums up the current situation.
With a love of guns and the death penalty reminiscent of the Red Queen, the Tea Party is determined to separate Americans, not from their heads, but from decent health care - a different but deadly proposition. As Timothy Egan wrote in the New York Times, Sarah Palin finally has her death panels. Folks who cut government trials for terminally ill children, take food from the mouths of hungry babies or deny counseling to suicidal veterans suffering PTSD.
Magical Thinking - “Default by Another Name”
The shutdown was the Tea Party’s first miscalculation based on a deep hatred of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), but now we are staring at default on the debt ceiling. Exactly what President Obama has warned us about, and in the spirit of contrariness that is the Tea Party, they must completely disagree with his dire predictions. Tea Party members were opining this week that default isn’t a bad thing and that Obama is just trying to scare you and the Republican Party into what Boehner calls “unconditional surrender”.
Many of us small business owners are just crawling out of the hole made in the economy after the 2008 financial meltdown. This new round of economic terrorism is infuriating. Republican consultant Frank Luntz must be working overtime. Buzz words and talking points are coming “fast and furious”. The latest is “prioritization”. Some members of the Tea Party are saying that default can’t happen, because we will simply pay interest on our debt. They think we can simply pick and choose what to pay. Like we can deal with our debt on the same a' la cart basis we are dealing with the shutdown – funding departments piecemeal by PR crisis du jour.
Here is why Americans are not convinced. If, as a small business owner, or a homeowner, we choose to only pay the interest on a business credit card, or loan – that payment is not considered paid. If that payment does not include part of the principal as well it is considered late. If it is deficient even a penny or delayed even an hour, we will surely get slapped with a late fee and our interest rate would go from an already staggering 24.9% to 29.9%. According to National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling, “Prioritization is default by another name.”
Tea Party folks may consider prioritization the answer, but our creditors will look at it differently.
The task ahead of the economists who understand this, trying to convince the Legislators who don’t, is crucial. I witnessed a much smaller version on the town Council. During budget time, the CFO would remind us that budget surpluses in small municipalities that need to balance their budgets are not “found money” to spend or give back “to the taxpayers” as some Councilmembers eyeing re-election want to do to become heroes. The surplus is the necessary cushion to buffer the variability of when taxes come in to the coffers. Town income is staggered and variable while many of the expenses are fixed and towns still need extra for replacing the expensive 100 year sewer pipe that didn’t ask permission to fail before it did. You can’t not pay the bills, you need to carefully balance your cash flow to make it all work. Towns sometimes need to borrow money overnight and pay it the next day to make sure they pay their bills. And the US Treasury has been doing this kind of balancing act for a few months now. But they cannot continue this high wire act for much longer without raising the debt ceiling. They make it look seamless and easy, but I assure you, it is not.
Skunks at the Party
What was disturbing was the length of time the Business community stayed quiet – hoping this would resolve and all would soon see reason. But as soon as the Tea Party members who had been talking about a “slimdown” abruptly pivoted and began to bring up “prioritization”, the business community woke up. Even the Koch Brothers, who had spent literally millions supporting groups that helped elect the very same Tea Party members gleeful over the shutdown or “slimdown” (Frank Luntz effect again, sigh) had to attempt to distance themselves from the madness with a formal letter. CEOs also began speaking up on Wednesday urging that default would be catastrophic.
Apparently, it’s all fun and games while the EPA and FDA get shuttered, until the families of grieving soldiers killed in action are denied death benefits due to the “slimdown”. The optics do not favor the Tea Party and no amount of hashtag Twitter games to pin the blame on Obama or Harry Reid can save them. We all remember how this started just weeks ago. The Tea Party was so proud of their shutdown until it went awry. Now that Obamacare is not affected by the shutdown, but is considered a success, it is not mentioned anymore. The “runaway spending” argument is back. Another day, another Tea Party pivot.
Negotiating with Arsonists
After months of telling Harry Reid, they would not negotiate and that only “squishes” (Ted Cruz’s famous term) negotiate, they are whining about being dissed by the President, for not negotiating. Congressman Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania compared it to negotiations with an arsonist about which parts of the house you would let him burn down.
Why Veteran Lawmakers are Worried
The problem is even though business leaders and elder statesmen like John McCain are speaking up, the Tea Party, who was courted and encouraged by the Republican Establishment, have an open disdain and contempt for Wall Street and the Republican Establishment. Even economists are being ignored. Like a rebellious teen, the more the older experienced Republican lawmakers attempt to rein in the craziness, the more the Tea Party dig in their heels and threaten to primary challenge any Republican who does not agree with them. The Tea Party members are legislators who homeschool themselves on trickle-down economics, pseudoscience and fuzzy math. You can’t tell them anything they don’t already know.
End in Sight?
The 2014 Midterm elections seem so far off, like an oasis of reason and salvation in a desert of hard times, starvation, and hallucinations. The only way our democracy works is to vote rational folks in who care about our country, and vote out the ones who would do us harm by clinging to magical thinking about our economy. We need a return to the real world of fiscal sanity. I don’t like life down the rabbit hole. I have a feeling folks who disapprove of Congress right now as well as our creditors overseas feel the same way.
In the meantime, the Tea Party should take a lesson from little girls who hold tea parties on a regular basis. They should remember their manners while in our House and kindly not burn it down.
