I’m not going to bother linking to the hundreds and hundreds of MSM (Mainstream Media) websites, Lefty blogs, etc. where the “Progressives” are trying to propagate a myth that the Tea Parties are people who are just upset about taxes. We’ve all seen the blogs and articles. The Left is going along with talking points being sent out by the OFAs and Media Matters of the world that Obama has “cut taxes” and Tea Partiers should be thanking the President instead of protesting.

Of course, we here know that it isn’t that simple. A recent poll suggested that a large percentage of people who identify themselves as Tea Partiers actually think we aren’t taxed too much. One would think that these poll results would cause the Left and the MSM to reconsider their preconceived notions regarding the movement.  But no, they insist that people are just upset about taxes because they’re brainwashed by those evil folks over at FoxNews or conservative think tanks to think that they’re paying too much, even while polls show that isn’t the case.

So what ARE the Tea Partiers protesting about? What are they saying?

They’re saying that the we’re Taxed Enough Already (T.E.A.). Not that we’re paying too much, but that the plans and laws and schemes being implemented by Congress are going to necessarily cause increases in what the American people are going to have to dole out in the future.  And income taxes (which is what the Left focuses on almost exclusively) are only a percentage of we will be required to pay. There are going to be hidden taxes, increased costs to businesses that will be passed on to consumers (i.e. us), inflation, future bailouts, etc. and Tea Partiers aren’t dumb. They KNOW they’re on the hook for all this stuff one way or another.

The Tea Partiers are saying “Federal Government? It’s your turn. Cut spending. NOW. We’re paying enough already and it is time you pulled those purse strings tight and stop the out of control spending on things you were never intended to be spending on.”  That’s what the Tea Parties are all about.

This, of course, would be the time some Leftist / Progressive/ Statist starts telling you that Congress is tasked with providing for the General Welfare and that all those programs we’re telling the Government to cut spending on are part of that mission. And this is where the debate breaks down. I’m sure you’ve all had this happen. The Progressive gives you the liberal interpretation of the Constitution and you have to go back and explain to them what the Framers meant. It goes back and forth and you’re treated to a rehashing of all the Progressive indoctrination you’ve had to deal with before.

The age we live in makes it difficult to have a thorough debate on these matters in the public arena. It’s a sound bite culture (sometimes I think it is intentionally so) and we, as a whole, are easily distracted.  I’ve been searching for a quote that encapsulates, quickly, what the Framers’ intent was when they gave Congress the power to lay and collect taxes to provide for the General Welfare.  A while back I found it.  Incidentally, the quote isn’t as much about what they intended (since that is already laid out in Article 1 Section 8 ) but what they did not empower Congress to do.  It is a quote by the man considered the primary author of the Constitution, James Madison.  Can you get a better source? I say no.

Here’s what he said referring to a bill in Congress which was proposing to subsidize cod fisherman:

“If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress…. Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America.”

Now, maybe it is just me, but doesn’t that sound eerily like what has happened to this country since the Progressive movement took hold in the early 1900s?

This is what the Tea Parties are all about. It isn’t about taxes, per se.  It is about getting our Government back to what it was originally intended to do. It is about Limited Government. It is about the proper role of the Federal Government. It is about adhering to the Constitution. It is about Liberty.

No wonder the Left doesn’t get it.