The attacks against the ordinary concerned citizens who call themselves "the Tea Party," are coming fast and furious. It would seem the Tea Party is responsible for the debt crisis, the credit downgrading, and removing the brakes from granny's wheelchair .

It is hard to believe that only a year ago, I was recalling how the Canadian newspapers were advising their people not to get involved in the running of the government like their neighbors to the South. They advised leaving that to the "experts." Judging from the congressional approval ratings, one wonders whether that term could be used for our senators and representatives.

If not for the Tea Party, who would sound the warning that our future economic viability is vulnerable without drastic spending cuts? We Tea Party citizens become informed about the government and those elected to represent us. I believe we gave many conservative representatives a backbone to stand up for what they believed in, but didn't have the outspoken support of the people before. They were not sent to Washington to mark time while their elder colleagues continued to dole more out of the treasury than was in it or coming into it.

These freshman representatives and the few new senators were sent to do something now, as in immediate, to reign in the irresponsible and unsustainable spending or else we would be exactly where we are now - the same predicament. Due to our baseline budgeting schemes, the agreed upon cuts are not really cuts. There is only a slower increase to the spending.

Standard and Poors downgraded our credit rating not because of the Tea Party. It was downgraded despite the Tea Party's best effort to cut spending. It was downgraded because real spending wasn't cut and there was an impasse to cut it.

President Obama vowed to veto a bill with more spending cuts. Republicans got the best they could with some significant cuts (really smaller increased spending,) but not enough to make the Tea Party and the rest of the world happy about the U.S. economic future. The world regards our debt as being riskier now.

If you want to be upset with the Tea Party, be upset that we couldn't shake enough sense into Harry Reid and President Obama to rescue our economy. Be upset that we couldn't take full advantage of the opportunity to force our leaders to be responsible.

One final word about taxation. The majority of the so-called "rich" are just those a little better off than you, and are paying the brunt of the tax burden. Expanding that burden isn't balance. During this economic downturn, removing more dollars from the private sector will only hurt economic expansion and job growth. This hurts all, but especially will hurt those struggling to get or keep a job. It is irresponsible to put up more obstacles to a real recovery.

John Palmer
Strongsville

Wall Street Journal Editorial
April 1, 2011

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704050204576219073867182108.html

If you want to understand better why so many states’ from New York to Wisconsin to California’ are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, consider this depressing statistic: Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government.

It gets worse. More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers. Nearly half of the $2.2 trillion cost of state and local governments is the $1 trillion-a-year tab for pay and benefits of state and local employees. Is it any wonder that so many states and cities cannot pay their bills?

Every state in America today except for two’ Indiana and Wisconsin’ has more government workers on the payroll than people manufacturing industrial goods. Consider California, which has the highest budget deficit in the history of the states. The not-so Golden State now has an incredible 2.4 million government employees’ twice as many as people at work in manufacturing. New Jersey has just under two-and-a-half as many government employees as manufacturers. Florida's ratio is more than 3 to 1. So is New York's.

Even Michigan, at one time the auto capital of the world, and Pennsylvania, once the steel capital, have more government bureaucrats than people making things. The leaders in government hiring are Wyoming and New Mexico, which have hired more than six government workers for every manufacturing worker.

Now it is certainly true that many states have not typically been home to traditional manufacturing operations. Iowa and Nebraska are farm states, for example. But in those states, there are at least five times more government workers than farmers. West Virginia is the mining capital of the world, yet it has at least three times more government workers than miners. New York is the financial capital of the world’ at least for now. That sector employs roughly 670,000 New Yorkers. That's less than half of the state's 1.48 million government employees.