DC Tea Party

By G.M. Corrigan

It’s a bright, warm and picturesque day on the west lawn of the Capitol, Saturday, March 20—the kind of irenic conditions perfect for a lazy family picnic or an old timers’ baseball game.

But a roiling sea of some 50,000 placard-brandishing “tea party” and other small government activists that, on three days notice, stormed here from across the country have less-than-placid things in mind—and appear ready to overflow the levees of organizer speeches and gimlet-eyed Capitol policemen to deluge the nearby House Office Buildings.

“Kill the bill; kill the bill,” the crowd hoots in unison, waving signs that variously proclaim, “Impeach Congress,” “Live Free or Die,” Abortion is not Health Care” and “The Hindenburg was Historic Too.”  The outburst is followed by an organizer request to sing “God Bless America” and to recite the pledge of allegiance, which is taken up.

“Hey, hey. Ho, ho. This bill has got to go,” the group eventually chants again, as off to the south a ripple of excitement follows the arrival of Conservative darling, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), who, with retainers in her wake, arrives on foot.

All this commotion springs from the final “Code Red” protest—prompted on Thursday by Congressman Steve King’s (R-Iowa) seemingly impromptu call-to-rally on the Glenn Beck radio program—against HR 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, before its floor vote in the House the next day. .

In reality a bill identical to one adopted by the Senate on Christmas Eve, HR 3590 needs 216 votes to pass and become law with President Obama’s signature.

House Republicans, however, are unanimous in their opposition to the $875 billion measure of tax credits, imposed state insurance exchanges and mandatory participation (with fines for nonparticipation) that purportedly will cover an estimated 32 million uninsured, and there were about 50 undecided Democrats the day before the rally—leaving Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) with about 12 votes to make up.

“[The only reason we have government] is to secure those rights that only God can give us,” Bachmann declaims from the podium. “Government didn’t give us those rights, and government can’t take those rights away.”

The crowd roars its approval and waves its American and atavistic, yellow “Don’t Tread On Me” flags.

“By July 2009, the federal government had already taken over 30 percent of the private economy,” she adds. “Now they want to take control of cradle-to-grave health care, 18 percent of our economy. So in something like 18 months, this government will have taken over ownership or control of nearly half the private economy….That is not the future that the founders bled and died for. That is not your legacy.”

Bachmann says she has to leave to cast a vote, and the agitated but orderly crowd (which left little trash in its wake) parts to let her leave. They will later swarm to the nearby House Office Buildings to lobby wavering representatives to “kill the bill” and then return at 5:30 p.m. to encircle the Capitol in a symbolic “we surround them” representation of a favorite tea party catchphrase.

Considered by conservatives a government grab of “one-sixth of the U.S. economy,” HR 3590 is seen as a major step in the road to a socialized America, and the largely middle-age, mostly white protestors here are working themselves up into a lather, hoping to derail passage.

“It’s my privilege to welcome you to your nation’s capital,” intones Congressman Mike Pence (R-Ind.), now at the podium. “You come to your nation’s capital on an historic weekend. After years of runaway federal spending, borrowing and bailouts by both political parties, this weekend the American people will say ‘enough is enough; this far and no farther.’

“This weekend…will mark the beginning of the end of liberal ascendancy here in Washington, D.C.,” Pence goes on. “This weekend the American people will begin the long journey back to the center of our national government, and demand that we have a government as good as the people and a government that lives within our means.”

For the past two months the president has taken personal charge—with the usual recourse to hinky horse trading (a reported water rights concession for certain wavering California politicians, for example), bully pulpiteering and a $7.6 million advertising blitz in 40 targeted, congressional districts—of the legislative effort.

Obama has made it clear that not only does his presidency ride on HR 3590’s success, but the whole Democrat agenda as well. Accordingly, he and Pelosi have pulled out all the stops, including, at the time of the Saturday protest, a dubious passage procedure that would have the House pass an amendment package to the bill, instead of the bill itself, and then “deem” HR 3590 to have been passed.

This “deem and pass” tactic, acknowledged by Pelosi as a face-saving way for caucus members to avoid voting on the controversial bill, has the reprovers outraged.

“Save America. Waterboard Congress,” a passing placard directs.

And to please hold-out, pro-life Democrats skeptical of the bill’s funding firewalls, the president even promised a special executive order banning the use of program funds for abortions.

By Sunday it has worked for a half-dozen of the hold-outs, including bloc leader Congressman Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), who opposed the Senate bill because of its vagaries on abortion funding.

But all of the president’s promises and the 153-page amendments bill, which, it later turned out, would be voted on separately, are really after-the-fact matters—unrelated to the main bill’s import and imposition—and likely would face an uphill reconciliation battle in the Senate.

It’s the corralling of 216 votes that will give the president the victory he has staked his presidency on—and, as well as wiping out the private sector student lending market, bring about the most sweeping change in the way Americans access health care in fifty years.

It is, in fact, an historic victory that the president would get late the following day with a 219-212 vote in the House (with no Republican voting in favor) and enactment at a signing ceremony on Tuesday.

But it is also a milestone that’s promptly followed by lawsuits filed by 13 state attorneys general, charging, on states rights and commerce clause grounds, that the act was flagrantly unconstitutional.

For the moment, however, the crowd is cheered by an organizer announcement that the latest whip count indicated that Pelosi was still shy of the needed amount.

“You are here because you are saying this is your country and you want it back,” Congressman Ted Poe (R-Tex.) blazes from the podium. “In another life I was a judge, and on the face of this bill, nowhere in the U.S. Constitution, does it give the federal government authority to make you buy anything….and make you go to jail if you don’t do it.

“This bill is unconstitutional, and no matter what happens tomorrow, we will not quit fighting this bill,” Poe adds. “We will not go quietly in the darkness of the night; we will not disappear without a fight.”

At a price tag estimated between $800 billion and $1 trillion (depending on the amendments package), HR 3590, which conservative radio host Laura Ingraham will later call “a travesty on top of a monstrosity on top of an unconstitutional power grab,” does not take full effect until 2014.

Then, the 32 million uninsured will have to enroll in some kind of program—either Medicaid, a tax-subsidized exchange plan or, if your earnings are over 400 percent of the official poverty level, a private or company plan—or pay a penalty of up to $750 a year thereafter.

Assigned as the collector of these penalties, the IRS reportedly is to be allotted $10 billion for program implementation and to hire some 17,000 new enforcement agents.

This fact alone is enough to get the “big brother”-wary crowd roiling again.

“Remember the words of Samuel Adams,” exhorts Congressman Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), ascending the stage: ‘“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!’”

But the bill’s price tag, according to a Thursday Congressional Budget Office report, is totally paid for by a combination of revenue sources, including some $500 billion in Medicare transfers, excise taxes, industry fees, and a increase in the Medical Hospital Insurance Tax for individuals earning over $200,000 and couples making over $250,000.

It even will reduce the deficit by some $140 billion over ten years, the CBO said, and by over $1 trillion in its second decade.

Republicans, however, dispute this prediction, charging accounting “gimmicks” and double-counting in the bill’s scoring and claiming that the new program will actually increase the deficit and increase unemployment at a time of economic hardship.

In fact, they see it as not being about health care at all, but about an unacceptable expansion of government that, if allowed, will put almost every aspect of American life at the mercy of federal bureaucrats.

In support of this majority view (polls at the time had 55 percent of Americans opposed to HR 3590), they dare proponents to name a single big government social program—Medicare, Medicaid, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Social Security—that is currently paying for itself.

“[President Obama is] worried that his presidency hangs in the balance, and that if we don’t have socialized medicine, his career will have reached its apex and will decline,” Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) finally says, taking his turn at the microphone.

“Mr. President, I have a message for you. This isn’t about you. It’s about the American people. This is about the constitution. This is about freedom and liberty. And we’re here to claim it and take it back.”

Freedom and liberty are common themes at the rally, and warrant closer examination, as both sides use the principles to support their agendas. The left, for example, uses them to justify the killing of the pre-born for just about any reason. The right, on the other hand, invokes them against the forced redistribution of wealth to the nation’s needy.

And both sides, in the partisan prosecution of their ideologies, unnecessarily align themselves with blocs—big government on the left and big business and banking on the right—that neither truly represent their causes nor render them much credit.

Of the two, however, it is likely that the regimentation, intrusiveness and coercive character of big government is the more insidious. Economic monopoly, after all, can be mediated with robust free market mechanisms, the protection and preservation of which, the folks at this rally likely would contend, is a legitimate function of government.

And, if, as the argument goes, human freedom is in fact the basis of all virtue (how can virtue exist if not freely chosen?) and development, how can a society truly prosper when the natural human resources of its citizenry are hobbled by big government constraint and taxation?

The left, however, sees government expansion as ensuring their freedoms; the right, rather, looks to free enterprise and individualism as their lodestar.

And that, in the nutshell but perhaps inchoately, is what this Code Red rally is all about: a distinct and abiding sense of creeping American socialism in the name of a dubious compassion for those who would be better off if steered in the direction of self-reliance and creative enterprise than toward greater dependence on a womb-to-tomb provider.

“[I’ve come to] D.C. with a group of proud patriots because we’re obviously concerned about the direction of our country, especially in regards to health care,” says Brett Bidel, an 18-year-old Young Republican, student and worker in his mother’s Frederick County home child care center. “We do not want to see our country socialized and [shorn of] what the founding fathers had in place for this free, Christian nation.

“I’m sick and tired of the Chicago politics and the corrupt politicians in Washington who refuse to listen to their constituents time and time again. They think they know better than us—we, the people. It’s just got to stop.”

“If the health care bill was so wonderful, why do they have to ram it down everybody’s throat?” asks Bill Nicholson, a retired Maryland state transportation worker from Thurmont, Maryland, and a liberal in other matters.

“If all these politicians are out for the public’s benefit, it should go right on through. They shouldn’t have to do all this arm-twisting and whipping and all this stuff. It just doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Nicholson is echoed by Valerie Raba, a staunch conservative from Frederick, Maryland and activist for Jim Rutledge, a Republican contender for U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski’s (D-Md.) seat.

 “I’m concerned about our constitution—” she says, “the shredding of it on a daily basis. I’m very upset about the fact that our forefathers prayed [in the Capitol into the 19^th century]. They were God-fearing people, and that that is just being just eradicated in our county—and that is what is bringing turmoil and destruction.

“We really, as a nation and a people, need to turn back to God. That is our salvation—and build from there.”

Corrigan is a free lance banking and business reporter who lives in Maryland.