RSS Feed MenuAs Republicans and conservatives have scrambled to rally the support of the Tea Party movement, many have failed to take notice of some of the important inconsistencies implicit in the Tea Party message. A recent New York Times/CBS poll reveals some interesting information about the movement and its fundamental “principles.”
According to this poll, 91% of Tea Partiers want a smaller government with fewer services. Despite this hostility to big government, 62% of Tea Partiers believe that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are worth the cost (apparently no one bothered to tell them that Social Security and Medicare are evil Godless socialist programs). This would suggest that in order to achieve fiscal sanity the Tea Party believes that spending cuts are to be implemented elsewhere within the vast expenditures of the federal apparatus. However when one examines their beliefs on paying down the debt, the result is somewhat troubling. When asked whether they preferred deficit reduction or tax cuts, 49% of Tea Partiers said they would favor tax reduction while 42% would prefer deficit reduction.
So, tax cuts are preferred to debt reduction, and social security and Medicare are well worth the cost. This sounds less like a movement of mature fiscal hawks and more like one of whiny adolescents (who actually happen to be middle-aged) who want their current taxes lower and their future benefits higher. They are only concerned with fighting government spending that benefits other people and are desperately seeking to save their own precious benefits. They think the costs are well worth it and they have no intention of shouldering the burden themselves. These costs will be incurred by future generations whose taxes will be higher and whose benefits will be lower or nonexistent.
I’m reminded of the Billy Joel song “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” It seems that to the Tea Party, the national debt has just “been burning since the world’s been turning” and there is nothing that can really be done about it… in their generation. If Republicans and conservatives are serious about conserving and reforming entitlement programs (as they should be) they need to find ways to overcome this cultural mindset which believes rights and benefits come free of any obligations and responsibilities. They must come to realize that these obligations extend to their fellow citizens as well as future generations. Maybe in between talk of death panels and the rising specter of Marxism, the adults can return to this national conversation and take the lead.
chicago_guy // Apr 25, 2010 at 3:01 pm
Churl, the government DID exactly what it said it would with their FICA money ; it used it to pay for the then-current retirees’ benefits. But the reality on the ground has changed, and the program is going to have to be modified to reflect those changes, even as this group of spoiled folks piss and moan about it (how much were they paying for their houses back in 1963 – $22,000? – yes, those of us who paid ten to fifteen times as much are really strung out about how tough it must be for these geezers after a life of $100 mortgage payments…).
Social Security was never a pension plan in the standard sense of the term. Again, the fact that these people didn’t understand that isn’t a reason to ignore the facts of the case. It needs a major overhaul, and one of those major overhauls is going to have to include means-testing and putting some life-time limits on the benefits, along with increasing the retirement age to a more reasonable 70 to 72.
BTW, Obama has proposed a common-sense automatic-enrollment IRA plan that would help relieve future generations’ dependence on Social Security, but as of yet, no Republican of note has embraced it, even though it IS a “self-reliance” measure that should be right up their alley.
Churl // Apr 25, 2010 at 3:39 pm
chigago-guy, but I don’t recall the government saying that it would STOP paying Social Security benefits anytime in the lives of the tea partiers or anyone else, for that matter. Indeed, politicians of both parties kept saying how secure the program was for the future. Don’t blame the people for believing the government on Social Security. We’re getting the same sort of promises for medical care under the Obama plan. Do you doubt those promises?
I take it you’re sour at the folks who bought houses with $100 per month mortgages 47 years ago. Compare their income then with yours now before you get too crabby. And if you paid too much for a house – tough.
SpartacusIsNotDead // Apr 25, 2010 at 5:53 pm
mymy wrote: “As it stands now my husband and I would have to live to be 200 to get back the monies we have paid into SS.”
I’m sure you genuinely believe this, but you are dead wrong. For 2010, about 6.5% of all earned income up to a max, this year, of about 107,000 goes to SS. Consequently, the most any employee will contribute to SS in 2010 is about $6,800. The max contribution for previous years has been less than $6,800.
I don’t know how hold you are or how much money you make, but if you earned enough money in each the 40+ years of your adult working life to make the highest contribution possible, you would have contributed only about $250,000 over your lifetime. You also would be eligible to receive the maximum SS payout, which in 2010 is about $24,000 per year. Consequently, if you retire at 65 you would need to live only to the age of 75 in order to get back the total amount you contributed to SS. However, if you live as long as the average American, you will continue to draw that $24,000 for about 10 more years until the age of 85, which means you will end up getting back about twice as much as you ever contributed – and it all is guaranteed.
The math for Medicare is even more compelling because the annual contributions for Medicare are much smaller than for SS and the value of medical services you will receive in retirement are likely to greatly exceed the amount of SS you will collect.
I would be very interested to know if these facts alter your opinion at all.
SpartacusIsNotDead // Apr 25, 2010 at 5:59 pm
mymy also wrote: “I suspect a lot of people by the 70’s figured out SS would go bust.”
Again, you are dead wrong. During the 80s, Reagan and Congress agreed on a plan that assured the solvency of SS up to around 2050. SS takes in way more money than it pays out. The problem is that the government uses those excess SS contributions to pay for other government programs. That is why Al Gore wanted to put SS contributions into a “lockbox” in order to prevent those monies from being spent on anything other than SS. Of course, Bush and the Congress did not go along with that idea.
Again, I wonder if these facts will have any effect on your opinion.
thijsvn // Apr 25, 2010 at 6:01 pm
The idea of the Tea Party as a grassroots movement is hilarious. There’s a been a harsh recession so a lot more people are complaining than usual. Trying to label them as some kind of uniform movement with a kind of deep seeded vision of what government should be, is ridiculous.
SpartacusIsNotDead // Apr 25, 2010 at 6:09 pm
Churl wrote: “the tea party adherents simply expect the government to come through on the arrangement the government said it was making”
Well, it’s going to be darn near impossible for the government to keep its promises to the TPers regarding SS and Medicare without gutting defense, raising taxes or increasing the budget deficit. Therefore, the goals of the TPers are entirely incoherent since they oppose any of these alternatives.
mymy // Apr 25, 2010 at 6:10 pm
I was saying 200 as a joke.Never the less I count the 12.4 incurred by employer and employee.I remember a conversation in the late 70’s about how SS won’t last.I always assumed if a bunch of nurses sitting around late at night could figure it out so could the”smart people”.
JonF // Apr 25, 2010 at 6:11 pm
Re: It needs a major overhaul, and one of those major overhauls is going to have to include means-testing and putting some life-time limits on the benefits, along with increasing the retirement age to a more reasonable 70 to 72.
You are probably right about increasing the retirement age, but I don’t see a lifetime benefit cap (that would penalize people who live to extreme old age (at which point they are almost certainly too frail to work any longer) and I doubt we will see much in the way of means testing, beyond tax increases for higher income retirees. Social Security can be made sustainable indefinitely by removing the income cap on the FICA tax, increasing the retirement age and rejiggering its COLA to more accurately reflect price inflation. Draconian measures are not needed.
Medicare on the other hand is the true train wreck.
SpartacusIsNotDead // Apr 25, 2010 at 6:44 pm
mymy wrote: “Never the less I count the 12.4 incurred by employer and employee.”
Fair enough. That still means that over an average life span you will get back about the same amount you put in – guaranteed. When Medicare is factored in, you end up getting way more than you put it.
SS was never intended as an investment. It’s sole purpose is to ensure no elderly person has to live in poverty, and Medicare’s purpose was to ensure no elderly person had to go without medical care. Both of these programs have been wildly successful when measured against their purposes. The fact that people are now living healthy lives long enough to draw long SS payouts is a testament to the success of these programs.
We should not be looking to return to the 1920s. Instead, we should be looking for ways to strenghten the solvency of these programs. That probably means, less spending on futile end-of-life care, raising the income cap on which SS and Medicare contributions are made and spending the Medicare budget more efficiently. I have yet to hear any plans for any of these things from the GOP or its Tea Party constituents.
balconesfault // Apr 25, 2010 at 7:01 pm
JonF: Medicare on the other hand is the true train wreck.
Indeed. Medicare Part D should never have passed without pairing it with either tax increases or specific spending cuts. Democrats at the time were complaining that it was mainly a large transfer of taxpayer money to big pharma and big insurance, and they were right.
SS was never intended as an investment. It’s sole purpose is to ensure no elderly person has to live in poverty
Exactly. Once again – it’s not a retirement plan. It’s a social insurance program, to pay out benefits to workers who are no longer able to work, either because of disability or old age, and to pay out benefits to surviving dependents of workers who die.
So sure, if I work until age 67 or 70 or whatever the retirement age is in 20 years, at my income level, it’s quite possible that had I taken that same amount of money over that time and mixed it in with my investment portfolio I’d be better off.
Then again, one could say the same damn thing if I had taken the money I’d spent on life insurance and disability insurance over that time and mixed it in with my investment portfolio. After all, I never needed SS disability payouts, and my kids and wife didn’t need survivor benefits – so I received no benefit at all, right?
No. I received social insurance coverage over that time which would have been available to me or my family had some misfortune befallen me. The existence of that coverage has been a benefit, just like having term life insurance for the last year which my wife (thank God!) didn’t collect from was a benefit.
Why is that so damned hard for people to understand?
mymy // Apr 25, 2010 at 7:02 pm
SND my point is SS is bankrupt,Medicare is bankrupt and no one knows what Obamacare is going to cost.This is not a sound way to run a country.Why didn’t we fix SS and Medicare first then try to find some way within our budget to help the uninsured.
SpartacusIsNotDead // Apr 25, 2010 at 7:05 pm
balconsesfault wrote: “Why is that so damned hard for people to understand?”
It’s not hard for them to understand. It’s just hard for them to accept that the policy tenets they’ve subscribed to for so long have failed. They have way too much invested in perpetuating falsehoods.
SpartacusIsNotDead // Apr 25, 2010 at 7:09 pm
mymy,
The CBO determined that “Obamacare” will cut the deficit by over $100 billion in the first 10 years. One of the ways it does that is by working on Medicare. Obamacare cuts Medicare spending by $500 billion. Without HCR you don’t get the $500 billion cuts to Medicare, you don’t get the $100 billion cut in the deficit and you end up with over 60 million uninsured by the end of the decade.
SpartacusIsNotDead // Apr 25, 2010 at 7:15 pm
By the way, SS is not bankrupt. As I described in my earlier posts, SS has taken in way more money that it has paid out. The problem is not with SS, it’s with other government programs that do not have a dedicated funding stream such as the FICA tax. If you want to extend the solvency of SS you need to cut other spending (Iraq and Afghan wars) or find some way to pay for them.
Incidentally, one of the main reasons the budget deficit has increased significantly than Bush’s budget is that Bush never put the cost for the Iraq and Afghan wars in the budget. Yet, those wars did indeed cost money that was never accounted for. By putting the cost of those wars in his budget, Obama forces an accounting for them, which naturally shows up in the form of a higher deficit than would be the case if the wars were not included in the budget.
anniemargret // Apr 25, 2010 at 7:23 pm
Sadly, I don’t believe even half the Tea Party knows what it’s protesting. The sound of anti-government sounds good to them because the government right now is Democratic and led by a Democrat who happens to be half black. I don’t think if you put one of these protesters in front of a camera and asked them what they believe and why, you would get a coherent answer. They are almost all Fox News watchers, Glenn Beck watchers, Sarah Palin adorers, and Rush dittoheads.
I think they are angry because the country is changing, and the old school is going out. This new generation coming in looks and acts and thinks antithetically to what the Tea Party presumably represents. I think that’s why we often hear the “I Want My Country Back” as their calling card. I think the illegal immigration issue, and the rise of minorities to powerful positions are making them afraid that they will lose their heritage…
I think if Republicans were in office right now there would be no Tea Party.
This is a simple case of old vs new, progressive vs statist, and a lot of fear-mongering from their so-called ‘leader’s to keep the flame of resentment and culture-warring alive. Witness how many Tea Partiers swallowed Palin’s ‘death threats’ hook, line, and sinker.
They were virtually silent during the Bush years…which underlines their partisan preferences. And no, I do not believe they were ’simmering with anger’ during the Bush years, rather they were complicit with his policies and silent due to allegience to their party.
That’s why I cannot give them any credence.
SpartacusIsNotDead // Apr 25, 2010 at 7:24 pm
JonF wrote: “Social Security can be made sustainable indefinitely by removing the income cap on the FICA tax, increasing the retirement age and rejiggering its COLA to more accurately reflect price inflation. Draconian measures are not needed. Medicare on the other hand is the true train wreck.”
Bingo. Although you probably wouldn’t even have to make all 3 of the SS adjustments you mentioned. Any 2 of them would probably suffice – particularly since all the Baby Boomers will be gone in 20-25 years. After them, the ratio of workers to retirees becomes much more favorable.
SpartacusIsNotDead // Apr 25, 2010 at 7:29 pm
Oops, I meant the BBers will be gone in 40-45 years.
AZ Immigration Bill and Racial Profiling | Conservative Heritage Times // Apr 25, 2010 at 9:13 pm
[...] that proponents of localism – both at this site and elsewhere – would find fault with this legislation. Localities will differ from each other on how they want to govern themselves. It [...]
Butiupandtwist // Apr 26, 2010 at 10:58 am
This article is rubbish! The writer is probably a nineteen year old twit that lives with his mother and seven cats.
Rob_654 // Apr 26, 2010 at 11:35 am
This article hits the nail on the head.
I have asked numerous Tea Party supporters both in person and online and have yet to hear any of them actually say “What they want cut in the government” and “How much do you want to cut it”?
And when I suggest that everything take a 10% cut to start off with they go into shock and say that: Medicare, Social Security and Defense can’t be cut – well – that is over 60% of the budget – if those are off limit we have no chance to cut government by just cutting – and besides in a free country – everyone has to give up some goodies…
But these Tea Party folks just want to cut (maybe) some things they don’t benefit from and they want to keep everything that they do benefit from…
Of course isn’t this basically what the Far Right keeps telling us they will do?
The Far Right keeps promising “Cutting Government” but they never do because they know that while it sounds good – as soon as the first cut starts they will start losing votes.
ktward // Apr 27, 2010 at 2:41 am
A window into one Tea Party member:
My brother is a card-carrying Tea Party-er in Seattle. Yeah, they’re a relatively mild–and smaller–bunch. Seattle Tea is not Texas Tea.
He’s not remotely phobic or racist. Nor inclined to don a tricorne– more of a fedora guy. He has always been Libertarian-minded: e.g. seatbelt and no smoking laws irk the heck out of him. Equally, he’s pro-choice, pro-science, and of course Libertarians and the ACLU have often found themselves united in cause. He’s ex-Infantry, though, and tight with the MIC. That officially disqualifies him from the Libertarian Party.
All in all he’s an excellent man, we’ve great mutual respect and we share very similar life philosophies. (Mom says I have to love him. Whatever.)
He’s always been Republican. (I was once, too) He read Limbaugh books back in the early ’90s. Fairly benign stuff. But in ‘08, he went positively fringe. “O’s a Socialist-Brown-Shirt-Squads-Coming” stuff. I’ve since wondered why this extreme ideo bent popped up.
I believe it comes down to a low complexity threshold; either he believes every problem–no matter how complex–has a simple solution, or he refuses to believe that complex solutions are sometimes the only solution. I’m not really sure which. There’s very little gray area, and good vs. bad provides uncomplicated structure. Don’t get me wrong, the dude’s highly intelligent: IT design and development.
He’s frustrated with the state of our country and the state of our political system. Aren’t we all.
But Tea confidently offers seemingly simple solutions that neatly align with his already long-entrenched political ideology: smaller gov’t, lower taxes, free markets. The fabled Reagan trifecta. Not as evident, apparently, is that Tea offers zero practical present-day solutions, is absurdly disorganized as a leaderless movement, and has a disturbing magnetism for pathological phobics & bigots.
A quick surf and I found about 15 various Tea Party orgs active in the Seattle area, and a handful of unaffiliated, but otherwise active, bloggers. None of them seem to communicate with one another, though there are a few ‘clearinghouse’ sites. Some spout the predictable Left-is-evil chatter, and they’re noticeably light on the Right-is-evil chatter. In that respect they’re no different than any other Right or Left partisan group. I’m a pragmatic centrist, I largely ignore all the partisan chatter.
Tea is quite pleased with itself, collectively. The pollster attention has them feeling confident in their movement, even if Tax Day turnout was lighter than expected in some cases. But I suspect Daniel Schorr is calling it right:
What will be the impact of the Tea Party movement on the midterm election and on the presidential election?
Without a settled leader and the makings of a program, perhaps less that would appear from the splash the Tea Partiers have been making. In history, Americans have sometimes given their heart to fast-talking populists but usually not for long.
I also suspect that my brother is not an anomaly among Tea members. At least not in Seattle.
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nhthinker // Apr 27, 2010 at 8:24 am
ktward,
Nice post.
I would guess that your brother thinks that government attempts to influence public behavior are the most part wrong-headed. It is likely, not that he is looking for simpler solutions, but that the complex “solutions” for more government influence are for the most part, well-intentioned but do not take into account the complexity of every benefit/risk decision that will be made by every citizen affected by the law. A government’s role is not to eliminate all pain to it’s citizens.
Libertian minded people think that persons should have the opportunity to fail and endure the disappointment of other family members for the results of their behaviors instead of turning first to government for help.
Moral-lite as a US government policy has not been effective at helping reduce the percentage of people that won’t take care of themselves as much as they could be capable of.
That you were once a Republican does a lot to explain why you you try to think through a rational argument. Maybe you are the non-Conservative that can speak the language of both conservatives and liberals. I think in the end, you come to wrong conclusions but at least you are trying to think about it, instead of the knee-jerk feel about it that we get from the liberal crowd or the progressive crowd. Your brother probably appreciates that about you.
Scaling back government and allowing people to voluntarily commune to address the issues of society that they care about is probably a common theme for most tea party supporters.
balconesfault // Apr 27, 2010 at 8:54 am
That you were once a Republican does a lot to explain why you you try to think through a rational argument.
That he was “once a Republican” does in fact help explain that.
A lot of us are in the “once a Republican” crowd specifically because we think rationally.
nhthinker // Apr 27, 2010 at 1:03 pm
balconesfault,
That you could be here commenting a while and not know the problem with the following statement is a bit revealing about your assumptions and ability to perceive…
“That he was “once a Republican” does in fact help explain that. “