The same ol' situation

No matter how many times Republicans promise to cut federal spending, they always - always - have an excuse not to.

This all began with a piece from Just The News that I promoted from odds and ends, called “Decade after TEA Party movement, conservatives still unable to meaningfully cut debt.” In it, writer Ben Whedon observed:

As President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” moves toward a final vote in the House, conservative budget hawks are livid that it largely fails to offer spending cuts to their satisfaction, marking the latest in a long line of punts for the House GOP that has repeatedly vowed to address the national debt.

Republicans have long campaigned on addressing the debt, with the Tea Party movement notching historic election wins under President Barack Obama. In 2010, Republicans won control of the House and reduced the Democratic majority in the Senate. Yet, even when Trump first took office, Congress did not pass a balanced budget.

While Whedon talks about the present day, there is an OG TEA Partier who has addressed this concern as well, garnering her a possible promotion from MER. (I say possible because these links may be behind a paywall and I seldom link anything but free stuff. I’m actually a paid subscriber to Chapter and Verse, the Substack of

Dana Loesch

.)

The Resurrection of Big Spending, Pre-Tea Party Republicanism Has Begun

From a Chainsaw to a Nail File

It was only a matter of time. When we launched tea party 2.0 our criticisms were initially directed towards Republican spending like Too Big To Fail and other runaway GOP insanity. It later morphed into protests against Obama’s overreaching administration. The so-called “Bush league” Republicanism that excused overextended government for the purpose of advancing Republican platform issues — regardless if those issues were moored in fiscal conservatism or the enumerated powers found in Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution — is back.

And also:

Now the GOP is giving us excuses, exactly as they did in the early tea party days. I’ve heard all of the excuses before so have you. Rescissions aren’t subject to filibusters any more than reconciliation is, so the meager amount of flex in this bill suggests that more Republicans than not oppose including more and stronger spending cuts. That sort of pierces the hope of taking a second bite at the apple later this year.

I’ve studied the origins of the TEA Party and the motivation driving patriots like Loesch, Jenny Beth Martin, Mark Meckler, Mark Williams, et. al. to oppose the administration of Barack Obama and demand the rightsizing of the federal government, with the first coordinated national protests occurring on a chilly February day in 2009. When Donald Trump was re-elected, DOGE came along, and Elon Musk took charge of finding waste, fraud, and abuse, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to have a Chris Matthews-style thrill running up my leg.

But, just like the heady aftermath of the 2010 election that netted House Republicans 63 seats and a return to the majority, governing seems to be the hard part. Back then the excuse was “we’re only 1/2 of 1/3 of the government,” but now it’s “we only have this narrow majority in the House.” And Musk is on the outside once again, complaining about the Republicans in Congress as well.

Yet if you remember the rank-and-file of the TEA Party, it’s very representative of the Republicans in Congress: sure, they were great about demanding a border wall and cuts around the edges of the budget to things like NPR and the National Endowment for the Arts, but “don’t you touch muh Social Security and Medicare.” (These were the Johnny-come-latelies who supplanted the purist libertarians in the movement.) Problem is that those programs are the root cause of the fiscal issues, although the DOGE cuts would be helpful in addressing the deficit as well.

The way I look at the situation hasn’t really changed in the last fifteen-plus years: regardless of what Republicans do, the Democrats are going to lie about draconian cuts so you may as well cut to the bone like you’re being accused of. Start with the recissions, then work on enshrining big (and immediate) cuts in the budget - none of this “takes effect in 2028” stuff.

We’re at war here, and it’s being fought against a government that’s stacked against the forces of Constitutional reform: the courts find any excuse to stop an Executive Order targeting an issue unresolved by President Autopen, bureaucrats are in open revolt, and Congress doesn’t want to pull its collective head out of its ass and do its job of fiscal oversight. If the Left wants to make noise about a parade, maybe we need to adopt the tactic and forcefully demand the more limited government we voted for.

In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there now.