Perhaps the strangest response to the deficit-cutting supercommittee’s collapse comes from one of Michigan’s largest tea party groups, the Romeo Area Tea Party.
On their website, the RATP declares that the supercommittee is a sham and their failure will have very little impact on the nation or the economy, or, presumably, the U.S. credit rating or the size of future deficits.
Given that the tea party groups main reason for existence is to stress the need for a shrinking government and an end to long-term deficits, it’s rather astounding that any tea partiers would downplay the supercommittee’s downfall.
At the same time that many commentators lament the sorry fact that Congress cannot, again, stick to a deadline and cannot manage to cut a relatively small amount (a little less than $120 billion a year) from 10 years worth of budgets, the RATP’s communications leader, Phil Dyer, wrote that none of this means much.
While tea partiers want to see $4 trillion or $5 trillion or more cut from future spending, the RATP apparently doesn’t see this latest failure as a setback. As if it was news, Dyer reports to the membership that the cuts would not take effect, under any circumstances, until January of 2013. Maybe he doesn’t realize that we’re already into the 2012 fiscal year and, logistically, Congress can’t start cutting tomorrow.
In any event, Dyer is right to point out that Congress could still circumvent the automatic domestic and defense cuts that now serve as Plan B. Relying upon the reporting of The Washington Post, the prospect of such shenanigans is mentioned on the RATP site in a matter-of-fact manner, not with any hint of outrage.
It’s typical, Dyer said, for Washington to kick the can down the road. Don’t expect any action on the deficit for more than a year.
Frankly, it’s hard to imagine how any tea partier could see a historic deficit-cutting committee fail, then predict that the fallback plan of mandated cuts would be manipulated and ignored by Congress, and then proclaim that it’s somehow a ho-hum moment.
Here’s the RATP post:
“Have you noticed the incredible amount of media attention focused upon the so called ‘supercommittee?’ With all this attention you would think that their gridlock will destroy the world as we know it. Of course, like most things that happen in Washington, it is a total fantasy.
“Sure there is a ‘deadline’ to make a deal before Thanksgiving, but it is an illusion of a crisis. How many times have we seen this happen over the last several years? They conjure up a crisis for no apparent reason. They do it because the technique works very well.
“It manipulates the American people, while facilitating the politicians doing really dumb things, under the pressure to solve the crisis of the moment. The truth is that the deadline is more than a year out. … That is when the automatic cuts take effect. So don’t let the folly of the supercommittee ruin your Thanksgiving. The country will still be here next Monday.
“This whole thing will likely get kicked down the road to the next Congress after the 2012 election. It seems like everything in the country is on hold until after the 2012 election.”
