Thursday, July 23, 2015

CPC and the Tea Party

From MinnPost Congressional Progressive Caucus
"Good Point. I think the Congressional Progressive Caucus is to the Democrats what the Tea Party is to the Republicans. In simple terms... A group of relative extremists that drive partisanship, and try to stop collaboration and the function of government. Since people here vent often about the Tea Party, I wonder if they will feel the same way when the CPC stops middle ground decisions from being reached." G2A
Thoughts?

20 comments:

Sean said...

What middle-ground position has the CPC prevented from being reached? Both TPA and TPP passed. CPC's position on splitting the votes for those two accords had significant support in the Republican caucus as well. (If the GOP had the votes to pass it, no Democratic support would have been required.)

John said...

Many things that the Tea Party has been against have been passed against their will. They have just made it harder to get things passed. Often Liberal commenters have portrayed the Tea Party somewhat as extremists who don't want government to function.

I am just curious if the Liberals will see the CPC folks as righteous crusaders fighting the good fight or as extremists who don't want government to function.

Sean said...

"I am just curious if the Liberals will see the CPC folks as righteous crusaders fighting the good fight or as extremists who don't want government to function."

I guess I'm not following the comparison. Tea Partiers have led the charge at various times to shut down the federal government and not raise the debt ceiling. The consequences of those actions would have been incredibly severe. Not raising the debt ceiling, for instance, would have put the country into default on its debt, which would trigger a worldwide economic crisis.

The CPC disagreed with a trade deal and wouldn't vote in favor of it. If the trade bill didn't pass, literally nothing would change from where it was today.

How are those two even remotely equivalent?

John said...

I guess it is a matter of perspective and belief.

You believe that the "Tea Partiers have led the charge at various times to shut down the federal government and not raise the debt ceiling." Whereas the Tea Party supporters see that the Tea Party stood up for slowing the tragic growth of the National Debt and endless tax increases. They stood for responsible governance where the politicians lived within their revenues, and did not steal from our children. Forbes How Much You Owe

Those supporters also likely believe that the CPC was working to stifle trade and keeping the costs of doing business in America high, which in the long term will damage the American economy.

John said...

My niece is now 4 and her dept is much higher...

Sean said...

"I guess it is a matter of perspective and belief."

Let's see: one group engaged in a solely one-sided partisan battle against a President of the other party -- and many of these same members voted blindly for much larger spending increases when the President was a member of their party. And their position could have resulted in a world wide financial crisis.

The other group held a position that had a large amount of support on both sides of the political aisle. Had the CPC gotten its way, the law would have been left unchanged and the world would continue on as before.

But, hey, it's all about "perspective".

John said...

An iceberg can sink a ship if one stays on course or if one turns into it.

You can get burned by staying in a burning building, or running into a burning building.

The current state may be good or it may lead to disaster.
Sometimes the heroes are those willing to change things up, sometimes they are those wise enough to not change.

I keep hoping that some Democrats want to shrink the national debt... But I could be wrong...

Comic 1 Comic 2 Comic 3 Comic 4

John said...

Tug Of War

In this cartoon, who in your view is creating the stalemate?

Also, if these folks had allowed the massive increases... Why did we need more large increases?

Sean said...

"I keep hoping that some Democrats want to shrink the national debt... But I could be wrong..."

You are clearly not familiar with the path of the deficit under Democratic and Republican Presidencies over the last 20 years.

Sean said...

Let's summarize:

You say the CPC are "extremists that drive partisanship". To support this position, you cite their position on an issue where they challenged a President of their own party and hold the same position as many in the Republican Party.

You say that the CPS holds up middle ground decision from being reached and offer no examples of that happening, other than the couple of day delay in the TPA/TPP deals. Somehow, a faction that controls 68 of the 435 seats in the U.S. House (that's only about 1/3 of the Democratic minority) is now the hold-up to progress being achieved!

Now they may or may not be wrong on their position regarding the trade issue, but their position on it is neither extreme (see Recent Polling on Trade nor partisan.

But John disagrees with them, so that makes them "extreme" and "partisan". And that Keith Ellison is a Muslim, too!

John said...

Please remember that I am a strong advocate for Religious Freedom. I am fine with Keith being a Muslim. Not so gung ho to support his far Left / Social Democracy agenda.

Keith Ellison
KE Issues

John said...

CPC Progressive Promise
CPC Issues

By the way, what they want seems really good. It is how they want to pay for and accomplish it is where we have a parting of the ways.

Progressive Agenda

John said...

Just curious, what is the reason for being so sensitive? A distribution curve has 2 tails. PEW Polarization

If the Tea Party is the right tail, why is it hard for you to see the CPC as the left tail?

Here was an interesting quote from the DSA.

"Aren't you a party that's in competition with the Democratic Party for votes and support?

No, we are not a separate party. Like our friends and allies in the feminist, labor, civil rights, religious, and community organizing movements, many of us have been active in the Democratic Party. We work with those movements to strengthen the party’s left wing, represented by the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

The process and structure of American elections seriously hurts third party efforts. Winner-take-all elections instead of proportional representation, rigorous party qualification requirements that vary from state to state, a presidential instead of a parliamentary system, and the two-party monopoly on political power have doomed third party efforts. We hope that at some point in the future, in coalition with our allies, an alternative national party will be viable. For now, we will continue to support progressives who have a real chance at winning elections, which usually means left-wing Democrats. " DSA Q&A

Sean said...

"Just curious, what is the reason for being so sensitive?"

Not sensitive in the least. I just don't think you've proven your point.

"If the Tea Party is the right tail, why is it hard for you to see the CPC as the left tail?"

Because nothing the CPC has proposed is radical. They are traditional "tax-and-spend liberals", if you want to label them.

I'll grant you it's difficult to nail Tea Party ideology to the wall, but look at the things many of them had advocated for beyond the things already mentioned, like a pre-Civil War understanding of the 10th Amendment, going back to the gold standard, or conspiracy theories about Agenda 21 just to name a couple and it's clear that they are far more "extreme" than the CPC.

I won't deny there are extreme folks on the left, you're just misidentifying them. If we're at the point where "extreme" is advocating for a top marginal tax rate lower than what it was for most of the Reagan administration, then that term has lost all meaning.

John said...

Beauty and Extremism is in the eye of the beholder.

Tea Party 1

John said...

CPC: A Peoples Budget

Wiki Tea Party

Based on this text, I suppose it is easy to stereotype the "Tea Party" based on individuals.

"The Tea Party does not have a single uniform agenda. The decentralized character of the Tea Party, with its lack of formal structure or hierarchy, allows each autonomous group to set its own priorities and goals. Goals may conflict, and priorities will often differ between groups. Many Tea Party organizers see this as a strength rather than a weakness, as decentralization has helped to immunize the Tea Party against co-opting by outside entities and corruption from within.

The Tea Party has generally sought to avoid placing too much emphasis on traditional conservative social issues. National Tea Party organizations, such as the Tea Party Patriots and FreedomWorks, have expressed concern that engaging in social issues would be divisive.[21] Instead, they have sought to have activists focus their efforts away from social issues and focus on economic and limited government issues." Wiki

jerrye92002 said...

"You are clearly not familiar with the path of the deficit under Democratic and Republican Presidencies over the last 20 years." -- Sean

And thus the common folly of blaming Presidents for the budgets built and enacted by Congress, which has been under Democrat Control for almost all of that 20 years, and much longer. I will agree, however, that there really is no restraint on Congress regarding deficit spending, other than the commonsense/ideological one, and those don't seem to do much good. Ask yourself: if you could spend as much as you want and never have to pay for it, would you stick to what you could afford?

jerrye92002 said...

And John, what makes you believe that "middle ground solutions" are solutions at all? Haven't all of these huge deficits arisen as "compromises" between those who want to spend no more than we take in and those that want to spend MUCH more than that? How is the compromise of only spending substantially more than you take in the right solution?

John said...

I agree with you whole heartedly that the "tax less spend more" compromise has failed our kids.

Therefore I think we should try the "tax more spend less" compromise. Unfortunately nobody seems to like the idea of paying bills and living within the budget. They would rather pay less in taxes, spend more than is taken in and transfer the cost burdens of our excesses to our children and grand children.

I mean neither the GOP or Democrats supported letting all those "terrible Bush tax" cuts lapse. And neither of them really wanted the sequester cuts, especially the idea of down scaling our military. And no one is willing to raise the payroll tax rates or cut the benefits.

jerrye92002 said...

Unfortunately the "tax more and spend less compromise" isn't really an option. Those who want to spend more will find a way to spend more than what comes in, regardless of how much that is. Since there is no limit to the amount of "good" these wastrels can buy with Other People's Money, no amount of taxation will ever be enough to balance the budget. The only way to reduce spending is to not give government the money in the first place, and with the federal printing presses running 24/7, not even that is sufficient.