Deficits--The Tea Party effect

NY Times:

Deficits finally matter.

After years of citing national security, social necessity and economic crisis as sufficient justification to pass costly legislation without paying for it, members of Congress are getting cold feet about continually adding to the national vat of red ink.

In the House, the leadership was forced this week to jettison popular health insurance subsidies and cut a major tax-and-spending measure in half in a desperate effort to round up votes from moderate and conservative Democrats. In the Senate, 26 Republican senators balked at an emergency war funding bill — an almost unthinkable position for them in the past — complaining that it was bloated and irresponsible.

Both measures ultimately passed as Congress made a messy pre-Memorial Day exit. But lawmakers say they appear to have reached a turning point when it comes to routine deficit spending. The new attitude could reshape the way Congress does its fiscal business the rest of this year and into the future, and potentially constrain President Obama and Democrats as they pursue their agenda.

Democrats are already ducking demands that they produce a budget for 2011, well aware that it would be very difficult to balance the conflicting interests of liberal lawmakers pushing for more spending and the centrists and fiscal conservatives who want cuts.

It is likely that Democrats will also punt on most of the major spending bills for the year, preferring to hold federal agencies at their current levels rather than get into a pre-election fiscal fight. There is mounting resistance to reflexively extending jobless pay for the long-term unemployed, and other initiatives, like a $23 billion plan to prevent public school teacher layoffs, face serious challenges.

The reasons for the new deficit sensibilities are both substantive and politically driven. A growing number of House and Senate members see both the annual deficits and the accumulated federal debt — hovering now at the $13 trillion threshold — as time bombs for future generations, the unexploded remnants of a lavish spending spree engaged in by both parties over the past decade.

At the same time, Republicans have stirred up their core voters and made inroads with independents by accusing Democrats of profligacy since they took charge. The success of the attacks has not been lost on Democrats, who are hearing it regularly from their constituents back home. Republicans, who share blame for the deficits the government ran when they were in power and in particular for the increase in the national debt from the tax cuts and spending increases they passed under former President George W. Bush, are also under pressure to show they have changed their ways as well if they hope to win over the Tea Party set.

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The fact is the Tea Party movement has been driving this new found concern about the deficit. They are the ones who have also made pork no longer fashionable are good politics. It has been a grass roots movements that the Republicans have been trying to latch on to. The polling on the issue has been too potent for Democrats to ignore anymore. This is especially true after the failed stimulus and the health care monstrosity were pushed through Congress by the Democrats. The Democrats alienated voters with these big spending bills and the anger can no longer be ignored nor can they get away with insulting the voters.

While it is true that Republicans spent too much when they were in charge, the tax cuts largely paid for themselves. That si something liberals do not want to admit, because they look for any excuse to raise taxes.