Tea Parties, Taxes and Your Future

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If you watched The Daily Show on Monday night, you might think that last weekend’s Taxpayer March On Washington, a rally of tens of thousands of conservative activists, a/k/a Tea Party Protesters, was simply a collection of extremists getting worked up over a few dollars.
 
But as marcher Art Gerunda told CNN, that would only be half the story—the irrelevant half.
 
Listen, this is a serious thing…This isn't a fraternity party. I don't think anybody down here is ... I mean, look at these guys. They're just people. ... Everybody's got the same concerns as me. To tell you the truth, if I didn't have two little 4-year-old grandchildren, I don't know if I'd be here.
 
Frankly, it’s the 4- to 40-year-olds who need to be paying attention.
 
Since last October, $700 billion was spent on the Troubled Asset Relief Program along with another $787 billion stimulus bill (that, so far, hasn’t been very “stimulutive”). All of that money is deficit-financed, which means young Americans get the privilege of paying it back—with interest.
 
According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, this and other spending will cause the national debt to be 300 times the size of the entire economy by the time today’s twenty-year olds are ready to retire. That means for every $1 you make, the government will be $3 in debt. (By comparison we’ve averaged around 30 cents of debt per dollar over the last few decades.)
 
But like Jon Stewart, sometimes it’s hard to keep your eye on that ball given that a minority of protesters used posters or made comments that were disrespectful and sometimes hateful toward the President. 
 
The insinuation that President Obama is equal to Hilter is wrong. It was wrong when the left did it to President Bush in print and in protests, and it’s still wrong now. 
 
But the idea that spending is growing to levels that will debilitate the economy is not wrong. It’s something that both the left and right agree on. And that cause, which motivated so many to turn out in D.C. this weekend, is worth your attention.
 
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