The impossible dream: reasoning with a Tea Partier

In today's Washington Post, Judson Phillips, the Tea Party Nation's founder, stakes out his organization's historic commitment to ineffable ignorance:

We do not have a debt crisis. We have a spending crisis. There is only one way you get to a debt crisis — you spend too much money.

Let us review with haste: No debt crisis here, just a spending crisis; however we to got to this debt crisis -- the one he just declared nonexistent -- by spending too much money.

But let's review in another way, shall we? Let's say you, Mr. Phillips, have $100, and you spend that $100, perhaps imprudently, even recklessly. Do you have a debt crisis? No, of course not. You're just broke.

The crisis, Mr. Phillips, comes when you borrow $100 for a tax cut, and borrow another $100 for another tax cut, and then borrow another $100 for a new entitlement program, and then borrow another $100 for a war, and then borrow yet another $100 for yet another war. 

And then you skip town, you retire, let's say, to Texas, on a government pension, and you leave your entire, misbegotten indebtedness to your unfortunate successor.

In a way, Mr. Phillips, you're quite correct. You don't have a debt crisis. He does.

You see, Mr. Phillips, we can quibble from now till next week's apocalypse about the wisdom of all your spending; we can argue and differ and do both rather violently about the fiscal smarts or ideological stupidity behind all of it; we can both haul out charts and graphs and think-tank propaganda to defend our respective positions -- but after all of that, one thing and only one thing will still be standing with a magnificent terribleness: We still owe all that money you borrowed.

This isn't like your world, Mr. Phillips, which is to say, it's not make-believe. These are real debts that we really owe. And beginning next month, unless we borrow more, we simply cannot repay them all. And that's called default, defined by Webster's as "a failure to pay financial debts."

Catch that, Mr. Phillips? Webster casts no moral or partisan or ideological judgment here; he doesn't on p. 300 of his tome point a finger at us and add: "because you spent too much money."

Comments

[Bulworth]

Can't believe they put this excrement of an op-ed in my paper this morning. What an assclown. The little blurb accompanying his scraw was something about borrowing causing more "government expansion". The teabags apparently don't understand that we have an aging population that will increase the ranks of the retired thus necessitating the "expansion of government". Unless he wants his parents and grandparents to starve on the streets. Thank you, Washington Post, for giving this brain-dead amoralist valuable space in your paper.

[Anne J.]

As Archie Bunker used to say, "Ah jeez, they're at it again". And again the rest of us ask: Where were they when this out of control and unnecessary spending was taking place under the administration of the spoiled rich kid who treated the treasury like it was his daddy's credit card? They act as though all of this began under Obama and never once acknowledge W's responsibility in this whole mess and what's worse is no one in the media ever challenges them on it. Were they cheerleading for the wars? Were they a-ok with massive wealthfare handouts to the idle rich? Again, somebody somewhere please challenge these yahoo's on their outright lies and willful ignorance.

[Peter G]

This is the point where I usually break out with a loud rendition of a certain tune from Man of La Mancha. Followed shortly thereafter will an equally loud public plea to stop.