The Tea Party Budget
Two days ago I read this Tea Party Budget plan developed by tens
of thousands of Tea Party members starting in June and presented to Congress on
November 17th. Immediately I
realized that this is the only proposal that would actually save our nation
from bankruptcy and reduce our unemployment.
I should not be surprised but over the past 36 hours not one news
outlet has even mentioned this magnificent plan. In fact not one of the
Republican candidates have mentioned it yet. For this
reason I am asking you to send this out to everyone you know and spread the
word.
I personally will vote for whatsoever Presidential, Congressional
or State candidates that embrace this plan. I have studied the long form of it
and find nothing I do not agree with. In fact I will go even beyond their
predictions and say that we will be debt free in Ten Years. My reason for this
is that I will include two things to my calculations that cannot be scored, an
increase in GDP and a decrease in unemployment, which will result in more tax
money going to
The Tea Party
Budget
A Comprehensive Ten Year Plan to Stop the Debt, Shrink the
Government, and Save Our Country
Findings and
Recommendations of the Tea Party Debt Commission
Delivered
to Congress November17, 2011
"The
Alexis
de Tocqueville, 1840
Summary:
Everyone Benefits
The
critics say the tea party is “all hat and no cattle” — that we have lots of
talk, but no plan. Well, that’s about to
change. Imagine a reform plan that makes
dramatic moves toward restoring limited, constitutional government. Imagine a plan that slows the numbers on the
National Debt Clock to a crawl, and then brings them to a halt, and then shifts them into reverse. Imagine
a plan that cuts, caps, and balances federal spending without raising taxes;
that gives future generations control
over their own retirement security; and that lifts the massive debt burden from
our children’s shoulders so they can know
the American dream of ever-higher freedom and prosperity. And on top of all that, imagine that it’s a
serious, credible, plan generated by the grassroots.
This is that plan. We
call it the Tea
Party Budget. Of course, we realize that the tea
party is a broad, spontaneous popular movement, without leaders
or formal organization — so we won’t presume to speak for anybody but ourselves. But if any plan offered to date has
a fair claim to the “tea party” label, we think this is it. Four months in the making, this plan is the
product of countless suggestions and comments from thousands of local
citizen-activists across the country and voting by tens of thousands more
online. Unlike other budget plans
produced in
The plan’s virtues are
those of
Our sincere thanks to the good
folks at www.FreedomWorks.org for facilitating our work.
We emphatically reject that vision for our future. Instead, we offer a bold — but, we believe,
feasible — plan that:
“Cuts, caps, and balances” federal spending.
Balances the budget in four years, and keeps it balanced,
without tax hikes.
Closes an historically
large budget gap, equal to almost one-tenth of our economy.
Reduces
federal spending by $9.7 trillion over the next
10 years, as opposed to the President’s plan
to Increase spending by $2.3 trillion.
Shrinks the federal government from 24 percent of GDP — a
level exceeded only in World War II —to
about 17.5 percent, in line with the postwar norm.
Stops the growth of the debt, and begins paying it down,
with a goal of eliminating it within this generation. To achieve these goals, our
plan, among other things:
1. Repeals Obama-Care in total.
2. Eliminates four Cabinet agencies — Energy, Education,
Commerce, and HUD — and reduces or privatizes
many others, including EPA, TSA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac.
3. Ends farm subsidies, student loans, and foreign aid to
countries that don’t support us — luxuries we can no longer afford.
4. Saves Social Security and greatly improves future
benefits by shifting ownership and control from government
to individuals, through new SMART Accounts.
5. Gives Medicare seniors the right to opt into the
Congressional health care plan.
6. Suspends pension contributions and COLAs for Members of
Congress, whenever the budget is in deficit. In
short, the Tea Party Budget enables us to end chronic deficits and pay down
debt, while moving us back toward the kind
of limited, constitutional government intended by our Founding Fathers. And it does all this without raising taxes. In
fact, we make the so-called Bush tax cuts, and other expiring tax relief provisions, permanent. With these reforms, we can unburden the
productive sector and get back to robust economic growth and rising living standards for all.
With this plan, everyone benefits.
The Challenge
A $15 trillion national debt.
Nine percent unemployment.
Twenty-six million Americans out
of work or underemployed.
College graduates unable to find work, waiting tables,
and moving back in with their parents.
Businesses sitting on more than $2 trillion in cash rather than using it to create jobs, because of massive regulatory and political uncertainty.
Debt ceiling “deals” that don’t
reduce the debt.
Diminished credit.
Downgrades.
Meanwhile, the specter of inflation and higher
interest rates is bubbling beneath the surface, preparing to explode. It’s already visible in producer
prices, and in the rising cost of staples like milk and gasoline.
The press and political class may call it a “slow recovery,” but it sure feels like a depression to the millions of citizens who have lost their jobs, their homes, their retirement savings. We are in the midst of the worst economic stagnation in a generation, certainly since the 1970s and perhaps
since the Great Depression itself.Americans voted for change
in 2006, 2008, and 2010. But this wasn’t the change they were asking for! At
the root of these problems is our own federal government — its size, its reach,
and many of its policies.
Waste and duplication abound. A report published
this past March by the Government Accountability Office counted no fewer than:
47 job training programs,
56 financial literacy programs,
80 economic development programs,
18 food assistance programs,
20 programs for the homeless,
82 teacher-quality programs
spread across 10 agencies,
and
more than 2,100 data centers.
All told, we have nearly 2,200 federal programs. What human being could ever know or
monitor them all? Who’s minding this mess?
Perhaps the best summation of this lamentable state
of affairs came at our field hearing in
“Government today is making a mess of things. My generation has absolutely no say in the matter. Each
of us owes over $44,000 to pay off the national debt.It is obvious to me what is needed
in this country is some teenage supervision!”
The Questions
In this,
as in any, crisis, the question for Americans is not
“How much government should we cut?” or
“How much government is enough?” nor even
“How much government do we need?” Rather, the first and essential question is, as it has always
been,
“What does our
Constitution require?” — followed closely by a second:
“What does our
Constitution permit?”
Alas, our leaders in
To read the entire mathematical details of this plan go to www.FreedomWorks.org