“The only way we will ever reduce the debt and balance the budget is if ... tea party activists take over this process.”
Matt Kibbe
Washington, DC

* Repeals ObamaCare in toto.
* Eliminates four Cabinet agencies — Energy, Education, Commerce, and HUD — and reduces or
privatizes many others, including EPA, TSA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac.
* Ends farm subsidies, government student loans, and foreign aid to countries that don’t support us
— luxuries we can no longer afford.
* Saves Social Security and greatly improves future benefits by shifting ownership and control from
government to individuals, through new SMART Accounts.
* Gives Medicare seniors the right to opt into the Congressional health care plan.
* Suspends pension contributions and COLAs for Members of Congress, whenever the budget is in
deficit.

These are some of the highlights of the newly released Tea Party Budget proposal. As FreedomWorks puts it, "The only means for reducing government is to cut programs and confine the power of government." The Tea Party Budget does just that. I have only given it a brief glance, but it is definitely a major step in the right direction. It should please anyone outside of the parasite/power-lust axis.

The Ryan budget was a start, but it only reduced, but did not eliminate, the deficits. Disagreements over specifics aside, the Tea Party budget is the real deal, in the sense that it doesn't tinker around the edges with, for example, "cuts" that really amount smaller spending increases. As Don Watkins says in this interview, the best feature of the Tea Party budget is that "It reintroduces the 'A' word - ABOLISH!"

I particularly like the feature that abolishes government student loans, one of the most destructive higher educational intrusions by government ever, if not the most destructive. For example, Neal McCluskey reports in the New York Post on how "the jet fuel [of] federal student aid" has driven college tuition through the roof. He calls it a "College-Cost Crisis", which it surely is, and a government-created one.

This budget in noteworthy in that it attempts to reign the federal government back within the confines of constitutional constraints. Taking the constitution seriously is also a good first step. Of course, the next steps will be more difficult - addressing the constitutional vagueness and the loopholes that opened the door to statism (ex. the Commerce Clause). And, even more critically, the budget must be philosophically, not just constitutionally, defended.

Culturally, this budget - along with the Occupy Movement - should spark the Tea Party, which has grown a little stale of late. A reinvigorated Tea Party should help make 2012 the most consequential presidential election cycle in decades.

On the political front, the question is: Will any of the GOP presidential candidates embrace the Tea Party budget? This will be a test of which if any of them is the real deal.

Stay tuned.

Labels: Government, Politics 2012, Tea Party Movement