How Long Will The Tea Boil?

         

          Recently, an evangelization of the Tea Party agenda has occurred. It is essentially a revolt against the Washington government, large governmental spending, and even the Republican Party. One must ask what they can accomplish by themselves. Well, a good number of them, including Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, got themselves elected last week. They saluted the movement that fueled their victory and the people who voted them in and said “We’ve come to take our government back” (Rand Paul). But just how will they do that, because actually achieving change in government is a lot harder than just decrying the previous Congress and administration. Up to this point they have acted as a mob trying to enrage the people to rally behind their cause, without offering any coherent, legitimate or reasonable means to actually achieve their goals. Will the movement be different now that they actually have members in positions of some kind of power in government? Will they actually achieve change? Will they have to abandon some of their principles to do so? The nation will have to wait and see.

          What the new government must do to actually change the current state of the government and the country are, many times, contrary to what the Tea Party activists have proclaimed as the only means they would be willing to adopt. All through the recent campaigning season leading up to the election on November 4^th, Tea Party candidates were advocating lower taxes and spending cuts but they did not say how they would take action.  To save the economy, as any reasonably- minded person knows, the government must raise taxes and encourage spending by its people in order to increase revenue for the government, but also lower its own spending. Are they will to do these things, even though it would most likely turn their volatile support base against them? They must be willing to raise the taxes on the very same people that elected them, because the deficit will just keep widening if they don’t. They must be prepared to cut middle-class entitlements, such as Medicare and Social Security, against the efforts of almost all democrats. They must be ready to take on the Pentagon, as well, because its spending, at $717 billion, accounts for “half of all discretionary spending” (Fareed Zakaria, Time).  They also must be ready to make concessions to the president; otherwise they will have to work over him which would surely cause major problems. They must work hard to halt a government shutdown, like that of 1995. They must refuse any and all earmarks that could further curtail funds from the national government. They need to weary and work hard to reduce the national debt, because it is getting close to the $ 14.3 trillion national debt ceiling. If not dealt with quickly and effectively, and if the ceiling is not increased, it has the potential to cause a global financial crisis. The current situation of the United States has a very grave potential, made all the worse by the national government’s history with bipartisanship. “If this looks like a prescription for gridlock, it is. It could leave independent voters disappointed that Washington isn’t delivering solutions. And it could leave the Tea Party’s activist base as frustrated with the pace of change as the hopeful democrats who preceded them” (Michael Crowley, Time). Hopefully this will not happen again.