The GOP and Tea Party need to get on the same sheet of music. I’ve been a registered Republican for 34 years. I’ve always counted on the GOP for fiscal stability, national security, and strong foreign policies. Unfortunately, when it comes to overspending, gargantuan government, and the presence of RINOs in the party, that’s where problems arise.
A summation of key issues that will affect the future relationship of conservatives within the GOP and the elections:
National Debt: This is the priority for the Tea Party activists as the country’s explosive $13 trillion debt helped spark the movement in 2009 when members protested government bailouts, the massive $800 billion stimulus package and President Obama’s health care overhaul.
Tea Partiers want to balance the budget, end runaway government spending, including pet projects for lawmakers known as “pork,” and stop the tax hikes.
While Republicans aren’t opposed to those demands, they have come under fire for running up the deficit when they were in power, including the $700 billion Medicare prescription drug benefit that wasn’t paid for and initiating the bailout of Wall Street and the auto industry after the 2008 economic collapse.
Tax cuts:This is an issue where Tea Partiers and mainstream Republicans agree. Both sides have called on extending the Bush tax cuts, saying their expiration even for the wealthiest Americans would amount to a tax hike that could imperil a fragile recovery.
Size of Federal Government:Tea Party believes in smaller government. Activists, including candidates Sharron Angle in Nevada and Rand Paul in Kentucky, have proposed abolishing the Energy and Education departments and the Federal Reserve.
Republicans also believe in limited government, but they have attacked candidates calling for the abolition of federal agencies as out of the mainstream.
Social Security:Tea Partiers have called for privatizing Social Security. But when President Bush made the same proposal in 2005, it was a nonstarter among Republicans in Congress.
Immigration:Tea Partiers supported Arizona’s illegal immigration law that a judge mostly blocked this summer. Republicans have also expressed support for the law but many conservatives are still mad at the party for trying to pass comprehensive immigration reform twice under President Bush that would have provided a pathway to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants.
Health Care:Tea Partiers want to defund, repeal and replace the law. While Republicans have echoed similar sentiments, Tea Partiers are concerned that Republicans won’t follow through on their promise if they regain power.
Energy:Tea Partiers call for the rejection of cap and trade, a policy that would cap the carbon emissions that energy companies release into the atmosphere and force companies to trade permits to emit.
Many Republicans also have opposed the policy, deriding it as cap and tax. But some Republicans who have supported it have paid a political price, most recently Rep. Mike Castle.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/09/15/gop-vs-tea-party-issues-dividing-sides/
Not enough Republicans are on board with issues that matter; pork barrel spending, taxes, wasteful government programs, out of control government hubris, and border security. Contrary to being “out of the mainstream”, the idea of abolishing wasteful, bloated government agencies is catching on.
The NEA, the DEA, and the IRS could be dissolved and would save the taxpayers billions.
Teachers unions have done more damage to education than any other single entity.
The so-called “war on drugs” is a joke. Over $36 billion has been spent so far, on making the purchase, use, sale and production of drugs a crime, when that money could be better spent on America’s security and infrastructure. There’s a website that keeps track of what is spent on the “war on drugs” here: http://www.drugsense.org/wodclock.htm
As for the IRS, do away with it and implement The FairTax plan. This is what it’s about:
It’s a comprehensive proposal that replaces all federal income and payroll based taxes with an integrated approach including a progressive national retail sales tax, a prebate to ensure no American pays federal taxes on spending up to the poverty level, dollar-for-dollar federal revenue neutrality, and, through companion legislation, the repeal of the 16th Amendment.
The FairTax Act (HR 25, S 296) is nonpartisan legislation. It abolishes all federal personal and corporate income taxes, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, and self-employment taxes and replaces them with one simple, visible, federal retail sales tax administered primarily by existing state sales tax authorities.
The FairTax taxes us only on what we choose to spend on new goods or services, not on what we earn. The FairTax is a fair, efficient, transparent, and intelligent solution to the frustration and inequity of our current tax system.
The FairTax:
Enables workers to keep their entire paychecks
Enables retirees to keep their entire pensions
Refunds in advance the tax on purchases of basic necessities
Allows American products to compete fairly
Brings transparency and accountability to tax policy
Ensures Social Security and Medicare funding
Closes all loopholes and brings fairness to taxation
Abolishes the IRS
http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer
Looks good to me.
The ideal situation would be absorption of Tea Party concepts into the GOP. Less government, reduce and control spending, secure our nation’s borders, focus on the Islamic threat to national security, and repeal and replace every single socialist disaster rammed through Congress by the Dems, especially ObamaCare. In other words, get back to the principles of the Constitution.
November is coming.