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Pete Wehner’s and Yuval Levin’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today was refreshing - and important.
Why? Because they called on the Tea Party to live up to its own terms – something America needs in a big way going into 2012 and beyond. Here’s what I mean: the Tea Party has been the greatest force for limited government in America since the Republicans’ victory in 1994, maybe since Ronald Reagan. And yet the movement has been less enthusiastic about limiting the REAL drivers off long-term government dominance (entitlements) than about limiting discretionary spending, which everyone knows will do virtually nothing to reduce our deficit on its own.
Levin and Wehner make this point by highlighting how Michele Bachmann, darling of the Tea Party, refuses to commit on exactly the issue that has the most to do with restraining the cost and expanse of government. They put it this way:
[Paul Ryan's plan] is the best, most far-reaching reform of health-care entitlements on the table. Yet when asked about Mr. Ryan's Medicare plan, Mrs. Bachmann's titanium spine seems to fold.
She has said she supports the Ryan budget's discretionary cuts but puts "an asterisk" over its Medicare reform. "We have to make sure going forward with senior citizens, that we're focusing on a higher quality of life, dealing with cures for instance for senior citizens," she told one interviewer.
If Mrs. Bachmann is worried that Mr. Ryan's reforms would not address her concerns, then there are other approaches to choose from. But she has declined to offer or endorse any, expressing only vague support for a small increase in the retirement age and greater means testing—neither of which would make a real dent in Medicare's growth, since neither would reform the grossly inefficient payment system that causes costs to explode throughout the health sector. An asterisk is not enough.
They continue:
The tea party movement has been indispensable in forcing Republicans (and through them forcing Washington) to start reversing the rampant spending of the last few decades. It can now do the same with respect to the far greater spending explosion looming over the next few decades—holding politicians, including presidential candidates, to a high and principled standard when it comes to addressing our fiscal problems. It can educate voters about our entitlement crisis and demand that office holders and candidates explain what they will do to fix the problem, and especially to reform Medicare.
If the tea party movement does this, it will take its place among the great, constructive political movements in U.S. history. If it doesn't, it will be judged to have been fundamentally unserious when it came to reining in the spending Leviathan.
Back in May I made a similar point:
In one big way: Tea Party 1.0, which led to historic gains in the House last November, was based on cutting (discretionary) spending. It's time for Tea Party 2.0, which needs to be based on reforming entitlements and the tax code. The movement's various leaders have not been as active or vocal on entitlements as they have been on spending…Tea partiers in Congress and activists around the country understand that the REAL mission is bigger than they thought, but the movement has not yet updated its rallying cry…If any movement can turn entitlement reform into a winning issue for candidates, the tea party can. If it tries.
The Tea Party cannot risk supporing Bachmann if, on the single greatest cost-driving issue of our day, her titanium spine turns to cardboard. They need to hold her, and all other candidates, accountable for what they will do on entitlements, and especially Medicare.
What you are suggesting is opening up a second front in the middle of a desperately-fought war. Sometimes you have to be content with holding the enemy at bay on the western front so you can gain ascendency on the eastern front.
Let Republicans get control of the Senate and the White House before they engage with the benefit system, except where waste and fraud are involved.
Posted by: Dawn Carpenter | August 19, 2011 at 03:12 PM