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Why the tea party protesters have it bass-ackwards: Where are the fiscal conservatives?
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There's a good reason the Republican Party has been called the Party Of No... They solidly lost the election, after eight years of exactly what they're protesting against: expanding government (homeland security anyone?), fiscal irresponsibility (unfunded war, tax cuts to the wealthy), and a gross expansion of executive power (torture and assasination contractors, an entire justice department twisting the law in the president's favor). Sadly, Obama seems to have continued along just like Bush: bigger government, more spending.
While I agree the size of the federal debt is too big to stomach, Obama was elected by a wide margin to do exactly what the's doing. He promised to bring healthcare to the uninsured and he is fulfilling his promise. He did not run on a promise of TARP bailouts.If there's controversy to call out, it's here.
Free Market Failure
There’s a massive disconnect between teabagger Republicans who claim to support a free-market economy and those same Republicans who don’t realize that their worldview supported the investment bankers and hedge fund owners who broke ZERO laws in the financial meltdown — because under those same unregulated free trade laws, all that over-leveraging and super greedy profit-raiding was never against the law. Can I repeat that? Legal, free market, unregulated leveraging and profit raiding caused the financial collapse. Which caused much of our massive debt.
So now that Obama is in power, somehow he’s a Socialist. Tea partiers clearly do not understand that the government redistributes wealth for the common good ever since it’s inception. Medicare anyone? Public schools, libraries, post offices, universities?? Military industrial complex? Haliburton? Corporate welfare and subsidies? Sometimes the redistribution is in the common good. Sometimes it's not.
I am less than comfortable with the bailouts, since I feel that the Federal Reserve and fractional reserve banking could use a serious shakedown. I don’t like the fact that, from my middle-income position, it looks an awful lot like those bailouts were all about political “friends” covering for their banking “friends.” All in the name of free trade. But the mystery seems to be that the Tea partiers would rather starve than give undeserved money to poor people or immigrants via healthcare coverage, while giving gobs of cash to bankers is only wrong once the godless Obama started doing it. Bush and Paulsen couldn’t help it. But Obama? He’s definitely trying to make the country communist. Bush expanded Medicare coverage and prescription drug coverage. No one called him a communist.
The Opportunity Republicans are Missing
Rather than take the low road with disruptive protests, Republicans should rally together with fiscally-conservative Democrats and Independents (like me) to push for spending cuts and a stop to unfunded spending. A constructive approach to healthcare might even include a fully public option with strict provisions for -- yes, cost saving rationing and limited basic preventative care. How can Republicans be crying about the horror of rationing healthcare while they're also crying about the horror of the cost of healthcare? How can Republicans decry the rising federal debt, but propose no solution to reduce healthcare spending? "Death Panels" are fiction, while Medicare's expanding cost is a fact. How are we to lower the cost of healthcare while still allowing Medicare patients the costly luxury of every treatment under the sun?
No Party Stands for Fiscal Conservatism
There's an empty place in the political landscape, a valley that no party seems to cover. The people who live here don't expect the government to give us so much. We would like to see the government stop subsidizing corporations. We might even like to see Medicare coverage and Social Security checks to wealthy individuals stopped. (Maybe.) What we'd like to see is a return to true fiscal responsibility and the austerity measures required to bring us back to a reasonable state of government spending -- and saving.
There's an old political saying that goes, "The only difference between the Republicans and the Democrats is that the Republicans want to spend too much on corporations and the military, while the Democrats want to spend too much on social programs." It might be funny if it weren't so true.
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