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Tea Party: Serious or Just Pissed Off?

I am one of those Conservatives that has disassociated themselves from the GOP.  The Republicans weren’t manging our money any better than the Democrats.  The only difference is that the Liberals would spend more and tax more, the GOP would only spend more.

Seeing the Tea Party focus so much on the tax side of the equation without spelling out exactly what they want to see on the spend side is disconcerting, if not a total turn-off for me.  Our entitlement spending is more than 75% of our federal costs and I haven’t heard a single candidate talk about cutting any of that.

I have not seen a demand for a delay in Social Security or Medicare benefits until the age of 70 or 75.  I have not heard anyone offer to return unemployment benefits to a six or even nine month period.  I haven’t heard anyone looking at the big spend items for cuts.

Running around saying that we pay too much in taxes is not going to cut it.  We need to get our debt under control with current tax policy before we worry about wanting tax cuts.

I would gladly sacrifice my income at the current tax levels if we could get a commitment to the following:

  1. Increase Medicare and Social Security eligibility ages to 70
  2. Drop the unemployment benefit to something reasonable.. say nine months for now and reduce to six months next year
  3. Repeal the health care reform act.. that thing is an atrocity of spending with no benefit
  4. Enforce pay-go  (I call it  pay-fo, but you get the point)
  5. Reduction in the pay and benefits for all federal employees (the rest of us took pay cuts, lost jobs.. they can too)

Everyone wants to make excuses for why one thing of the other cannot be cut or why this tax break or another can’t happen.  I say, give up on the tax breaks, but it better come with a plan to balance the budget within a year and some laws to make sure that it’s kept that way.

I want to hear specifics.  What will the candidate cut and by how much?  How will that affect the average person?  If the tea party isn’t pushing for direct answers to how the deficit will be cut, I’m not buying any of it.

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Rich Mitchell

Rich Mitchell is the editor-in-chief of Conservative Daily News and the president of Bald Eagle Media, LLC. His posts may contain opinions that are his own and are not necessarily shared by Bald Eagle Media, CDN, staff or .. much of anyone else. Find him on twitter, facebook and

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One Comment

  1. On your points:
    1.Increase Medicare and Social Security eligibility ages to 70
    Partially Agree. ONLY for S/S.
    2.Drop the unemployment benefit to something reasonable.. say nine months for now and reduce to six months next year
    Disagree.Extended UI should have some relationship to the cuirrent unimployment rate. As the rate goes higher it automatically keys small extensions in weeks of benefits. Set a base level of unemployment %, say 5%, and for each 1% it increases add 13 weeks of benefits to the maximum allowed. That makes sense, because as things improve the max returns to a lesser amount of weeks.
    3.Repeal the health care reform act.. that thing is an atrocity of spending with no benefit
    Agreed, but get government out of the “benefits” business entirely in the long haul. In the short run, repeal this madness and corrct what is wrong with the current system. ONLY.
    4.Enforce pay-go (I call it pay-fo, but you get the point)
    Agreed, essentially make deficit spending illegal.
    5.Reduction in the pay and benefits for all federal employees (the rest of us took pay cuts, lost jobs.. they can too)
    Agreed. Also reset public pay scales of government to match the average of their counterparts in private industry.

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