The Tea Party Is Driving America into Bankruptcy

[unhappycamper]

http://watchingamerica.com/News/222666/the-tea-party-is-driving-america-into-bankruptcy/



The Tea Party Is Driving America into Bankruptcy
Frankfurter Rundschau, Germany
By Damir Fras
Translated By Ron Argentati
1 October 2013
Edited by Gillian Palmer

A respected columnist writing for The Washington Post recently opined that the Republicans in the House of Representatives were “like a bunch of three-year-olds playing with matches.” He likened them to naughty children whose parents were unable to discipline them.

Like most such comparisons, this one is also lacking: Even three-year-old kids who set fire to their rooms are generally bright enough to learn not to do it a second time. But not the tea party gang within the Republican Party's conservative wing in the House of Representatives. These radical-populist representatives are unteachable: Now they've set fire to the foundations of the oldest legislative democracy in the world. Through pure obstructionism, they persist in driving the United States government into bankruptcy.

Never before in American history has a basically stable principle such as the separation of powers been as threatened as it is today. Never before has it been more clearly shown that a truly tiny group of irresponsible representatives is capable of turning the productive cooperation of politicians, the president and the Supreme Court into a divisive, chaotic mess. Those few ruthless individuals with no principles only have to outshout the rest for it all to work. The founding fathers suspected as much, but they had no way of predicting the rise of the tea party that would ignore the spirit of the Constitution whenever doing so suited its own purposes.

And now it really does suit the purposes of this small but decisive portion of the Republican Party. The tea party faction has taken the Republican Party — and with it the rest of the nation — hostage. They simply and openly declare they will vote for a new budget if — and only if — the health care reforms popularly known as Obamacare, which they detest, are put on hold. That is something Obama cannot accept. To do so would constitute a gross violation of parliamentary practice. Obamacare is his most important program; besides, it already has the blessings of the democratic process and the American court system. The Congress of the United States passed it into law in the spring of 2012 and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld its constitutionality later that summer. People unwilling to accept those facts are not politicians; they only insult our intelligence and are downright dangerous to boot.