Tea Party’s Next Targets: Blocking Judicial Appointees, Killing Gas Tax
There is a remedy for this. The President should transfer federal employees out of the districts blocking his nominees to other districts. If there are manpower shortages and backlogs, let them be in obstructionist districts.
As the nation sweated the very real possibility that America would default on its debt, a band of the freshman congressmen blamed for the standoff gathered for a long-promised pot of seafood gumbo at the home of Rep. Steve Southerland (R-FL), just a few blocks from the panicked Capitol.
These 19 Tea Party freshmen, as they’ve become known—derided as “terrorists” by Vice President Joe Biden and “bizarro” by their own Republican Party icons like John McCain—showed no remorse about bringing the nation to the brink of financial Armageddon.
Instead, they calmly traded stories about families and what brought them to politics, poked fun at their accusers, and reveled in the satisfaction of knowing they had dramatically brought Washington to its knees—eventually to accept a deal, bitter to both parties, that slices $2.4 trillion from federal spending over the next decade without any immediate tax hikes.
This ragtag band of proud obstructionists is already looking down the calendar to its next targets: blocking President Obama’s judicial and federal-agency nominations, radically restructuring Medicare and other entitlement programs, and maybe even killing the gasoline tax.