Conservative group launches "Tea Party Debt Commission"
When President Obama set up an 18-member commission to tackle the national deficit, its proposals were met with condemnation from all sides and had little impact on Congress. The Tea Party is hoping its own deficit commission can do a little better.
The conservative group FreedomWorks, run by former GOP House Speaker Dick Armey, announced Monday that it's forming an 18-member Tea Party debt commission, which will deliver to Washington leaders a detailed and comprehensive plan for eliminating public debt.
The commission plans to have a proposal ready by the end of the year aimed at balancing the budget within 10 years and stopping the national debt from growing without raising taxes.
The goal is to write the "budget from the bottom up," FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe told Hotsheet.
Plans for the commission were set at a four-day Tea Party activist "boot camp" that FreedomWorks hosted over the weekend, where about 150 activists from 30 states learned about the nuts and bolts of politics, from running a campaign to crafting policy.
The activists crafted a statement to explain the impetus of the commission, declaring that "Washington remains incapable of providing the bold leadership and tough decisions these difficult times demand." Just as the Tea Party compelled the Republican party to draft the "Contract from America," the conservative movement is hoping once again to influence the congressional agenda.
"The third iteration of the Tea Party is all about understanding the legislative process and the tough choices," Kibbe said. He explained that the Tea Party started as a protest movement and then morphed into a get-out-the-vote effort during the 2010 midterms, which ushered in the Republican House majority.
"Now, 'we, the people' must govern," he said. "That's a responsibility all of these activists feel because they helped get these guys elected."
FreedomWorks plans on finding local Tea Party leaders from 18 battleground states who are interested in "rolling up their sleeves and learning about the budget process," Kibbe said. Those commission members will serve on working groups, just as Mr. Obama's deficit commission did, to tackle specific budget issues like Medicare and non-defense discretionary spending. They'll also hold "field hearings" to discuss debt reduction ideas with local activists, as well as "crowdsource" their proposal by soliciting ideas online.
Some of the goals for the proposal include reducing federal spending by at least $300 billion in the first year and by at least $9 trillion over 10 years, FreedomWorks told the New York Times. The group also aims to limit revenue to 19 percent of GDP.
Kibbe told Hotsheet it's unlikely the group will tackle tax reform. "I think we really want to focus on the spending side," he said. "We're trying to balance the budget and eliminate the national debt -- that's a plenty ambitious goal all in itself."
And while defense spending is on the table, it's unclear whether the commission will address it. "Every Tea Partier I've talked to understands defense is a significant outlay of the federal budget," Kibbe said. "I think there's a broad divergence of opinion on those issues, so that'll be interesting."
