Weekly Opinion/Editorial

MODERN DAY TEA PARTIES SEND A MESSAGE!
by Steve Fair

On Wednesday, tea parties will be held all across America. Not the type of tea party where women wear hats and daintily hold their little finger out as they sip black pekoe from a china cup, but the type where average citizens protest what’s going on with our federal government.

The modern day “tea parties” got started when Rick Santelli, a reporter for CNBC, said the government was promoting irresponsibility by bailing out people who took out home loans they couldn’t afford. (View at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEZB4taSEoA). When Santelli made the on-air comments from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, he mentioned that it was time for a Chicago Tea Party. Santelli’s remarks inspired 30,000 Americans to stage “tea parties” in over fourty cities across the country in late February.

Other Americans, concerned about the state of the economy and the direction of the government toward socialism, organized and established Tax Day- April 15th as the day to stage the events. The most visible tea party in the Sooner state will be at the State Capital on Wednesday at noon. For information on "tea parties" in your area, go to http://taxdayteaparty.com/

The original Tea Party was in Boston harbour in 1773 and the battlecry was, “Taxation without Representation!” The American colonists objected to the Tea Act for a variety of reasons, especially because they believed that it violated their constitutional right to be taxed by their own elected representatives. While we have representation, it appears most of Congress is ignoring what average Americans are saying

What are the modern tea parties all about? First, they are non-partisan. Republicans, Democrats and every other Party will be represented at the events on Wednesday. Second, they are an opportunity for average citizens to let their voice be heard by their elected officials. Third, the tea parties will provide resource sites so the participants can remain informed in the future. There are watchdog groups and think tanks that do a good job of monitoring what is going on in Congress and their websites will be provided to those participating. And finally, the tea parties will send a clear message to our elected officials that Americans are not pleased with the way things are going in Washington.

According to the Institute for Policy Innovation, http://www.ipi.org/, there are at least ten reasons why citizens should be up in arms about their taxes and get involved in “tea parties.” Those ten reasons are:

#1. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects the national debt will double over the next five years; and it will triple over the next 10 years to $17.3 trillion.

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#2. The CBO projects the national debt will soar over the next decade from 40 percent of GDP today to a shocking 82.4 percent. Compare that to just twenty years ago when Reagan left office. The national debt was at 42 percent of GDP.

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#3. The budget will grow federal borrowing by $2.7 trillion this year alone, an increase of 27 percent in one year!

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#4. The budget for this year increases federal spending by an incredible 34 percent over the previous year, with a total of $4 trillion in federal spending, the highest ever.

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#5. The federal budget deficit (not the national debt) would reach $1.845 trillion this year, according to the CBO, the highest ever. That would be more than seven times Reagan's largest budget deficit of $221 billion.

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#6. The CBO estimates this budget deficit will total an astounding 13.1 percent of GDP, more than one-eighth of the entire U.S. economy, for the federal budget deficit alone! Under George Bush, the federal deficit for 2008 was 3.2 percent of GDP. The deficit for fiscal year 2007, in the last budget adopted when Republican majorities controlled Congress, was $162 billion, or 1.2 percent of GDP.

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#7. The top five percent of wage earners will have their income tax increased under the Obama budget. The budget includes $1 trillion in tax increases on the upper 5 percent of income earners.

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#8. Corporate income tax will increase by 124% in the next three years under the Obama budget. Corporations will only pass those taxes on to consumers or end users.

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#9. A $645 billion tax increase will be imposed from President Obama's proposed anti-global warming cap and trade system, which is essentially an energy tax on the production and use of carbon energy, such as oil, natural gas, and coal.

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#10. Of the two trillion dollars the Obama administration claims to have cut from the budget over the next decade, $1.5 trillion of those "cuts" actually represents the troop draw down in Iraq.
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In these tough economic times, government should be tightening their belt and strengthening the dollar. Instead they are engaging in irresponsible, reckless spending, borrowing and bailouts. Hopefully, Wednesday's tea parties will get the attention of Congress and the President. On Wednesday, Americans will once again cry out, “taxation without representation!”