Tea Party Brokers Budget While Obama Retreats

Tea Party Brokers Budget While Obama Retreats
By John Ransom
4/11/2011

There is a budget brokered, at least until September.

That’s a big accomplishment considering the Democrats, running a one-party government, couldn’t get a budget introduced, yet alone passed, when they were the only brokers in power.

Somehow, the GOP, holding merely one house of one branch of government imposed it’s will on the rest of the government. Never have so few cut so much from so many government programs. That doesn’t happen unless someone has been given a mandate.

It’s not yet the finest hour, but it is a fine one nevertheless.

While some folks decry the 2010 budget deal as too little, too late, don’t count me as one of them. Substantive spending reform can only happen if conservatives win the Senate or the White House in 2012.

That’s the way our system was designed; for gradual change, not revolution. For those who feel the revolution has been betrayed somehow, I caution that revolutions in American politics are slow, fitful things that are evolutionary not revolutionary.

That’s how our founders intended it.

They understood how government works at a practical level. They didn’t want any government to get too carried away by hopey and changey rhetoric.

There is a lot of credit to go around for the historic change on spending, but most of it should go first to voters who have said they are tired of the reckless outlays by the federal government. They didn’t buy Obama’s stock phrase about “investing” in government.

And why should they? The U.S. has the finest free market in the world. Something of basic economics has rubbed off on most Americans, even if it seems to be lost on Obama. Americans know the difference between an investment and con eventually.

For the first time in 46 years Congress has actually reduced the level of spending year-over-year. Without voters making it absolutely clear in townhall meetings and rallies and protests that they are taxed enough already, we’d be looking at higher spending most certainly.

But the grassroots gave Boehner and the GOP the clout they needed to cut the budget. That bodes well for future negotiations. The Democrats have already conceded the need to cut and have been left with only a feeble protest against the Tea Party as a counter.

An assist can be given to President Obama who looked mostly disengaged throughout the budget process-in fact, he’s looked disengaged since Obamacare passed last year.

It now appears that Obama’s reelection strategy will be to keep his head down, let Congress wrangle on issues, until a consensus is reached, then appear to be the guy who brokered a deal.

That might work for a president who is popular in the polls, but for Obama it’s a sign of how irrelevant he’s become. For all the Democrat disdain of the folks back home, it was the Tea Party, not Obama, which brokered the spending cuts.

To make the point clearer, the budget deal made it certain that the Senate will have to vote before the 2012 elections on the repeal of Obamacare, one of the most odious of all the administration’s programs in the opinion of regular voters. To put it another way: Obama stood up for Planned Parnethood in negotiations, but not for his biggest legislative accomplishment.

With 23 Democrat seats up in the Senate in 2012 in important states like Florida, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, the vote on Obamacare will move from the merely hypothetical and symbolic to the substance of hope and change.

Obama won’t be able to hang back and take the highroad on his signature healthcare legislation, pretending to broker a compromise.

Americans after all know already who brokered that deal.
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To read another article by John Ransom, click here.