No, Really. Are They Serious?
by Ernest Zampelli, Economics Professor, Catholic University of America

It is simply beyond belief to me that there are people who actually consider Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann as serious candidates for the presidency of the United States. But, the Tea Party zealots appear to have gained control of the Republican Party. American politics requires political competition. Over the last century, both parties produced able political leaders from Teddy Roosevelt at the start of the century to Bill Clinton at its end, with Robert LaFollette and Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and John Lindsay in between. We need to have a strong two-party system, but if we are to have anything resembling effective governance, both parties need to be run by sane people. Alas, this is not your grandfather’s GOP. 

Governor Perry’s baseless and hateful attack on Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, demonstrates his lack of civility first and his economic ignorance second. To label as “treasonous” Chairman Bernanke’s policies - monetary stimulus and quantitative easing in the face of excessively sluggish economic growth and an official unemployment rate still in excess of nine percent - is plainly and simply inexcusable. These are the standard sorts of monetary policies that are called for whenever the economy is experiencing severe shortfalls in aggregate demand and inflation is of no real concern.  Any macroeconomics 101 student worth his or her salt knows this. Of course, let’s remember that this is coming from someone who is running on the Texas “miracle” of job growth, a miracle that really doesn’t exist if you just bother to take a closer look at the numbers. Without going into too much detail, Governor Perry’s so-called miracle is based on population growth, low wages, and low health benefits, the perfect way to take away jobs from other states. And though the Texas unemployment rate (8.4%) is below the national average (9.1%), it remains above states like Maine (7.7%), Maryland (7.2%), Massachusetts (7.6%), New York (8.0%), and Vermont (5.7%), to mention only a few.  Boy, there seems to be lots of miracle states out there Governor!  By the way, this is the most recent data reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. You can see for yourselves at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/laus.nr0.htm.

Then there is the other self-proclaimed miracle worker, U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann.  She is going to work her miracles on gasoline prices. Speaking to a crowd in South Carolina, the congresswoman from Minnesota exhorted confidently that “Under President Bachmann you will see gasoline come down below $2 a gallon again.” This is pure fantasy. It rests on the misguided, ill-informed, yet widely accepted notion that more oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR), in offshore U.S. regions currently off-limits, and in other parts of the onshore U.S. will decrease oil prices enough to force retail gasoline prices below $2 per gallon. Oil prices are set in a world market. Like it or not, believe it or not, the U.S. is a very minor player on the supply side of the world oil market and hence, any additional oil drilling by the U.S. will have very little impact on world oil prices, not anywhere even close to what it would take to drive gasoline prices to below $2 per gallon. Oh, and let me just add a comment or two regarding a fantasy that is closely correlated with this one: If we produce more of our “own” oil then we’ll be more “independent” of foreign oil, where foreign is usually a code word for the Persian Gulf countries. (Flash—only about 18 percent of our oil is imported from the Persian Gulf while 35 percent comes from Canada and Mexico.)  Remember that world oil prices are set in a world market. As long as we use rely on oil, whether supplied domestically or from imports, we are susceptible to changing market conditions in the rest of the world.  If there is an increase in China’s demand for oil, the U.S will feel the pinch of higher oil prices.  If there is unrest in the Persian Gulf, disrupting oil supplies, the U.S will feel the pinch of higher oil prices.  The only way the U.S. can be independent of “foreign” oil is to be independent of oil itself.  It would be nice if policymakers could grasp these elementary economic and geologic facts.

And lastly, let me take on the enlightened view that both Governor Perry and Representative Bachmann share—climate change is a hoax, an artifact of manufactured science. Let’s be clear here. The governor and the congresswoman are basically saying that the conclusion reached by the most comprehensive study of climate change to date, by the National Academies of Science, which concluded that climate change is occurring and is caused in large part by human activities, this study is not to be believed and/or trusted.  Two-hundred and fifty-five signatories, eminent climate scientists and researchers, are not to be believed. The estimated 97 to 98 percent of the most active researchers and publishers in climate change science who support anthropogenic climate change are not to be trusted. It is all a hoax perpetrated by junk scientists, just like that evolution guy, Darwin. 

These two people, with lots of Tea Party supporters, are actual contenders for the most powerful job in the world.  Really?  Seriously?

There are more than 80 members of the Tea Party Caucus in Congress. Most of these members are first-termers, elected in the national wave of revulsion against Washington in 2010. A new poll finds the two most common characteristics of Tea Party members are that they are Republicans and they're largely religious fundamentalists.   

The Tea Party members of Congress were largely elected because voters wished to voice their discontent with the lack of jobs. They were not elected because of the national debt or government spending. But that is their cause. They are idealogues in the classic sense of the term, that is, they believe in a single Omnipotent idea, one they feel will put all things right if only that idea was enacted. Their idea, or cause if you will, is to reduce government spending, to reduce it dramatically. And like all other ideologues, they are largely indifferent to the amount of human suffering that will come about in the pursuit of their goal. They certainly do not wish to cause suffering but they accept it as collateral damage.

The Tea Party was obviously quite willing to have America default on its debts in order to get the spending cuts it wanted. Its members ignored Republican Party leadership which was at least willing to talk about compromise to avoid default. Tea Party members ignored Reagan-era economists who warned about the varied dangers of default.

Very significantly, and morally troubling, Tea Party members ignored or even denied the impact on America’s poor and vulnerable that would have resulted from a default. And they ignored the damage to these same poor Americans that would result from these drastic cuts in our national budget. Some 500 million dollars will be taken from food programs for mothers and children. 40 different education programs will be cut. And of course, there is the continuing danger to traditional safety net programs like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.

Like other forms of ideology, Tea Party members are impervious to external evidence that does not confirm their worldview.  A wide variety of economists, for instance, argue that what America needs right now is not spending cuts but rather jobs and growth. Government should be spending more, not less. Indeed, last month’s jobless figures would have been robust had they not included the loss of some 37,000 government jobs, cut as the much-maligned, but absolutely necessary, stimulus spending comes to an end. The country needs another Stimulus Bill, not another round of budget cuts. We also need more revenue which could of course come from increased taxes on the ultra rich. All of these remedies are rejected by the Tea Party which repeats, in a robotic mantra: we have a spending problem, not a revenue problem.

The classic political ideology of the last century is, of course, Communism. Like the ideology of the Tea Party, Communism had a single and simple worldview it felt would make all things right. Countless intellectuals around the world flirted with Communism in the 1920s and1930s as a cure all for the multiple political and economic challenges of their day. They ignored massive evidence of atrocities committed by Stalinist Russia. Human suffering did not matter in the pursuit of a perfect world order.

The American political system is built on a multitude of interests and counter-interests. In their wisdom, the founding fathers built a system that would promote the common good by keeping any one interest – or one idea – from dominating the government. They created a constitutional system that would not favor one religion over another, nor one economic class over another. By balancing interests, and forcing them to seek compromise, the founders envisaged a system that would resist the appeal of ideologues committed only to their singular views of what should be done.

The founders were many things but they were not ideologues. And they would be appalled to find the Tea Party invoking their work and their memory to justify their scorched earth tactics. We as Catholics believe that all political and economic institutions must serve the common good, not some evil social Darwinist fantasy in which money makes might and might makes right. We welcome debates about how to better serve the poor, as our faith calls us to do. But, we will fight those whose indifference to the poor shocks our moral conscience and should shock theirs, too – if only they could find a way to fit the Gospel into their worldview.