Tea Party behind year of drama in Congress
By Richard G. thomas Voterama in Congress February 2, 2012 10:54PM
Protestors hold signs and chant slogans outside the Geneva office of Rep. Randy Hultgren on Tuesday. The group gathered to urge the congressman to support raising the debt limit, and many called for the protection of Medicare and Social Security. | Jeff C
Updated: April 3, 2012 11:24AM
WASHINGTON — The Tea Party was the most dynamic policy force in Congress for most of the 2011 session, but ended the year in a legislative flop that raised questions as to whether the movement’s influence on Capitol Hill has begun to wane.
Tea Partiers were the driving force behind two large budget-cutting packages that GOP leaders negotiated with President Obama and congressional Democrats. In both cases, their winning strategy was to demand outlandishly high spending cuts and repudiate tax increases — then threaten to seriously disrupt government operations if the other side didn’t go along.
“I’d like to see us win on the merits of the arguments, but sometimes you’ve got to win on the drama,” Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas, said.
At its core, the congressional Tea Party consists of about 60 House Republicans elected in November 2010 on radical anti-government platforms. Once in office, they set their sights on slashing federal spending, as a share of the economy, to pre-1965 (Great Society) levels. As the legislative year unfolded, just about every other member of the GOP caucus jumped aboard on most major issues.
Along with agency budgets, the movement’s favorite targets were the 2010 health law (which they attacked in at least 12 votes), Environmental Protection Agency laws and rules (at least nine votes) and any initiative by President Obama, even his troop deployments over Libya.
During floor debate in June, Rep. Sam Farr, D-Calif., told a Tea Party adversary “you know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.” Farenthold later said the remark shows “a misunderstanding of the Tea Party. There’s a lot of value to government programs, but the question is — is it something appropriate for government to be doing at all?”
The Tea Party’s brand of hardball worked in April, when its threat to shut down the government compelled Democrats to swallow much deeper cuts than they wanted in fiscal 2011 discretionary spending. The strategy won in August when Tea Partiers allowed the U.S. debt ceiling to rise — and the government to avert default — only in exchange for Democratic support of the draconian Budget Control Act. That law set in motion between $2.7 trillion and $4 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years that critics say will decimate the social safety net as well as programs that have helped build the American middle class. The Tea Part responds that by cutting spending they are saving the economy.
“I rise to congratulate the Tea Party for extorting a deal made in their image and their image alone,” Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said on the House floor. But Tea Partiers, even those such as Farenthold who voted for it, saw the Budget Control Act as badly flawed. “The success … is overshadowed by the massive increase in the debt ceiling that allowed it to happen,” he said.
Matt Kibbe, the president of FreedomWorks, a Tea Party patron, denounced the law on his group’s website as “not the serious reform Tea Partiers demanded” in November 2010. Kibbe said he prefers the House-passed “Cut, Cap, Balance” bill.
At year’s end, House Tea Partiers overplayed their hand by blocking an extension of Social Security payroll-tax cuts unless they were paid for by another round of deep spending cuts. But they ended their holdout, and sided with Obama, when Republican voices such as The Wall Street Journal editorial page lampooned them for having maneuvered the party of low taxes into a stance of opposing a major tax cut for 160 million workers.
The editorial was headlined: “The GOP Tax Cut Fiasco.”
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