In line with Rush Limbaugh stating “nobody is a fiscal conservative anymore” recently, is it fair to suggest the Tea Party movement was never about the debt, fiscal conservatism is a myth and the GOP will do a total u-turn once a Democrat is in the Oval Office again?
They’re fine with it because in the end, the debt only matters when Democrats add to it in order to fund social programs. But if Republicans pile on the debt to the point where the budget is about to break, “Oh my! Well, it looks like we can’t afford social security, medicare, medicaid, SNAP, and TANF. So-reeeeee!”
Certainly.
Fiscal conservatism is not a myth, but it is dead. Reagan killed it damn near 40 years ago. It was always about rhetoric for Republican pols. Democrats bought into it as well and shrieked that the Republicans were cutting too much and starving black babies or something.
I will also note that the wokest Dem congress in history just passed a budget giving Trump’s Pentagon every cent they asked for. The military welfare complex plays both sides nicely.
It should have been obvious from the beginning, because the Tea Party movement never supported cuts to military spending. It’s always been about “I’m paying too much tax” and “The poor don’t deserve handouts.”
But somehow the rich and the highly profitable corporations do.
The Republicans don’t cut welfare spending either. Where have you been?
No one said they did, just that they keep threatening to.
The Tea Party was mostly about culture, ethnicity, and race. It was clear enough then, but this should make it extra-extra clear. They (meaning tea-party Republicans in office) are fine with spending, just not by Democrats, and especially not by black Democrats with foreign-sounding names.
Of the Congress people who were elected in 2010 during the Tea Party wave, how many are still in office? I don’t know the answer, but my impression was that their numbers have shrank significantly.
With the two-party system, we’ve unfortunately gotten into a situation where neither party has any incentive to reduce the debt. It has become a hot potato to pass around. Debt-cutting measures such as austerity, tax hikes and spending cuts will cause pain to voters, who then punish the debt-cutting party…by voting the opposing party into power. It’s a tiger neither party can afford to get off of and stop riding.
In fact, it may be in the interest of one party to now increase the debt, so as to make it likelier that the opposing party will suffer a debt crisis when they are in power, which then causes backlash and gets the first side back in power again.
Yeah, the Tea Party pretended to be about fiscal responsibility when that message lined up with their broader social and cultural parochialism, but they were never serious about it. They were, for the most part, all about identity politics.
What’s more interesting to me in the current political environment is the almost complete abdication of policy priorities by the one group of Republicans who really did, for a while at least, seem to actually believe their own rhetoric about budget deficits and fiscal responsibility: the Freedom Caucus.
If there was one faction within the Republican Party that I thought might actually have the courage of its economic conservatism, this was it. While I disagreed with many of the Freedom Caucus’s arguments, they always struck me as folks who might actually be willing to stand up for their principles, even within their own party, and especially against someone like Trump. And yet, with the exception of Justin Amash, who’s ditched the GOP altogether, the Freedom Caucus members have shown themselves just as cynical as every other Republican in their power grubbing, and just as willing to throw out of their previous criticisms of Trump, in order to ride the Orange Bandwagon.
Debt and deficit spending seems to be more about who’s gore is getting oxed these days. There IS no fiscal responsible party, and no fiscal conservatives. Now, it depends on what and why you are going into deficit spending on, no on doing it at all.
WRT to the Tea Party, I think they are down to only about 40 or so these days, so they aren’t really much of a factor. I don’t think they have that much power wrt the party anymore, if they ever really did.
I was always under the impression that the tea party faction was never a large grouping and that their influence came solely from the fact that they held just enough support to become the balance of power. Empty vessels make most noise and all that…
Just to gore the other oxe, I did a quick Google search, and found that there are nearly 100 self identified progressives in Congress, so one might ask, why haven’t they pushed through a full progressive agenda? I mean, if you are asking where is the Tea Party wrt deficit spending (i.e., why haven’t they used their massive power of 48 members to shift Congress and stop the deficit spending), I’d be asking why Progressives haven’t done more for their own agenda.
Of course, the answer is really the same, which is American politics don’t really work like that. You can’t just do what you want, even within your own party. You have to ally and horse trade with other people who want or demand different things, and you have to compromise.
I do find it very interesting that, now that the shoe is on the other foot and Republicans are more in charge that deficit spending is not a big deal anymore. It’s very hypocritical, and definitely demonstrates what the OP is wanting to, which is that deficits really weren’t that important to Republicans…it was just something they used against the other party when they were doing it. And, I’m sure, folks in this thread won’t care much about them either when the Dems are back on top and doing more deficits, as many of the Dem hopefuls seem to be raring to go wrt more spending. More spending seems to be the only thing both parties can agree on, even if they can’t agree on what we should be spending more on…
I’m not sure it’s necessarily that Republicans like big spending or that the debt isn’t a big deal to them, as it is that it’s utterly drowned out by other noise these days. Politics over the past few years (and not just the Trump years) has turned into a shrill screaming match with a hundred different opinions screeched at max volume. With the border wall, kids in cages, trade war with China, identity politics, Russia, Mueller, impeachment, AOC, etc., the issue of debt and the deficit has simply faded to background noise.
I looked it up. I count 23 current members of the House Tea Party Caucus, with 24 being former members. Of the formers, some have gone on to bigger things, like Mick Mulvaneu becoming the Acting Chief of Staff to the President. Others have had a tougher time, like Michelle Bachmann, who continues to be Michelle Bachmann.
Until there’s a cure, people.
They didn’t.
The NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) for 2020 is still in process. There are differences in the House and Senate bills to be resolved in conference committee. (Cite)
There was an agreement to exceed Budget Control Act limits for DOD and other authorizations. That included an agreement on what the total DOD number will be. That DOD topline is 738 million in both bills. DOD requested 750 million. That’s 1.2 trillion cents more than they are probably getting(Cite and Cite)
…and now back to the OP after the detour for accuracy.
I thought they mostly died.
Rush is correct about the “no fiscal conservatives” part, and certainly the GOP will flip if and when a Democrat is in the White House. Trouble is that Rush is correct about the “no fiscal conservatives” part, because so will the Dems. All spending bills originate in the House of Representatives - refresh my memory, which party controls that House?
And Trump meant exactly as much by his pledge as previous Presidents meant by theirs.
The deficit is inexcusably high, and there is no better time to address it than now. Years ago would have been better. It needs to be addressed with spending cuts, and tax increases, in a roughly 2:1 ratio. Republicans will not cut military spending, Democrats will not cut anything else, neither party will increase taxes (see the Bush era tax cut expiration), and everything else is political posturing.
We should care about this. Both parties should be just as up in arms now as they were when a member of the other party was in the White House. But politicians don’t get re-elected by cutting spending.
Regards,
Shodan