WASHINGTON — We are engaged in a long war — actually two long
wars. The first and most commonly accepted of our wars is the long
war against Islamofascists. It is not a war against vast armies.
Comparatively speaking it is just a war against a handful of thugs,
but they want to strike at our heart, wherever we are ill-prepared,
and if they can they will cause incalculable destruction. This we
discovered on September 11, 2001. We are on the hem of wiping
al-Qaeda out, but there are other thugs waiting. We must be
vigilant against them. It will be a long war.
The second long war is at home on budgetary matters. That
both the left and the right are in a fury about an early battle in
that war, the debt-ceiling battle, suggests just how long that war
will be. We have little consensus on this war. Yet a war it is, and
a very long war I fear it will be. It is a war to balance the
budget, putting the economy on a sustainable course, and ensuring
growth and jobs. It is a war to get the country back to a federal
budget that accounts for 20 percent of GDP rather than the 25
percent of GDP that President Barack has snatched from us while we
were not looking.
Today the left is grumbling that the Congress agreed to
budget cuts of nearly $900 billion over the next ten years but with
no new taxes or as they delicately put it, no new “revenue
enhancements.” As Congressman Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat from New
York, exclaimed, “It’s a surrender to Republican extortion.” He
elaborated, “It’s one thing to say ‘we want this. We don’t want
that as part of negotiations.’ It’s another to say ‘we will destroy
the country and the economy if you don’t do what we want.’” My
response is just get government spending back to where it was
before the Obama revels. Tax increases kill job growth, are unfair
to those whom the left targets to pay them, and give us a false
sense that we can continue on this perilous path to ever-larger
government.
The federal budget has accounted for roughly 20 percent of
GDP in recent years. When President Obama came to power he
increased that to just shy of 25 percent of GDP, a peacetime
record. In other words, he increased government’s size in our
economy to 25 percent of GDP and he wants to keep it there at that
historic level forever, or until he can grow it larger. It will
mean slower economic growth, but he rather likes that too. The
answer to Obama and the grumbling left is “give us the 5 percent of
the economy that you took form us.” I think that is reasonable.
That is what we want.
Unfortunately, the Tea Party is unhappy. It is the most
successful political development in decades. It removed “revenue
enhancements” from the recent Washington agenda, at least
temporarily. As recently as July 28 President Obama was insisting
that tax increases had to be part of the debt-ceiling deal. He
lost. The Tea Partiers focused the agreement on spending cuts but
many do not think they got enough cuts.
To be sure, they did not get enough cuts in the
debt-ceiling battle, but they are in a strong position to get them
in the battles ahead. They must not be distracted. They must not
pack it in and go home. A Tea Partier by the name of Ellen Gilmore
told the Wall Street Journal, “People are saying, ‘These
tea partiers, aren’t they wonderful, they are changing the
conversation.’ Well, we got absolutely squat — except for the
conversation.” Actually, the Tea Party is leading us toward a
tipping point, as Sean Hannity and Jeffrey Lord pointed out on
Tuesday. And the tipping is to the right and it can stay there for
years to come if the Tea Party and conservatives play their cards
right.
We now are heading for the small battles to ensure that
the debt-ceiling agreement is carried out properly. Then there is
the great battle of the 2012 elections and the retirement of Barack
Obama. Finally there will be other battles after 2012. The Tea
Party is essential to winning these battles. It must not give up.
It must stay the course. We are in a long war, but with the Tea
Party’s assistance it is winnable. The fight has just
begun.
