The Tea Party's Pyrrhic Victory

[xchrom]

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-17/tea-partys-victory-against-government-spending-comes-at-high-price#r=rss



Say this for Tea Party Republicans: They don’t back down. No apologies for triggering a partial shutdown of the federal government, then refusing to raise the debt ceiling without concessions. Condemnation rains down on them from the White House, from foreign capitals, from public opinion polls, but the Tea Party rages on.

They say they have no choice: Deficits are out of control; something must be done and soon. “Politicians have very effectively addicted Americans to government, but it’s not sustainable,” says GOP Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. It’s that sense of being on the brink of disaster that feeds Tea Partiers’ determination to fight to the end. For them, the debt-ceiling deal reached by the Senate on Oct. 16 is merely a cease-fire.

But the Tea Party’s belief that things are slipping away is misplaced. Obamacare aside, events have actually gone the movement’s way ever since Republicans wrested control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterm elections. Discretionary spending has been falling. Federal-employee head count is down. And since 2010, deficit reduction has been more rapid than in any three-year period since the demobilization following World War II.

Discretionary spending (i.e., spending excluding transfer payments and interest) will fall even more in the decades ahead if the laws that the Tea Party helped get on the books stay there. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that, under current law, by 2038 total spending on everything other than the major health-care programs, Social Security, and interest will decline to the smallest share of the economy since the 1930s.

[malaise]

1. They blow $24B and want tobe taken seriously

re deficits. Fugg 'em!

[kelliekat44]

2. + 1,000. But you know what it really is all about. nt

[Laelth]

3. k&r for the truth. n/t

-Laelth

[Motown_Johnny]

4. This was all about primary battles for (R)s who are not conservative enough

for them.


We don't know who won this yet. It depends on the Republican primary voters next year. Personally, I think that the Teabaggers might have won this. If they are trying to purge the party so that they don't get another Romney in 2016, then they just might get what they wanted.

I would love to see a poll explaining what Teabaggers think about Christie as a nominee in '16.