Reich to businesses: stay away from those Tea Partiers, or no more government cheese!

by TrogloPundit | October 30, 2010 3:30 pm

Former something-something Secretary Robert Reich has a warning for businesses: fear the Tea Party! Because they hate government, and they’ll cut spending, and…

…no, really, that’s his argument. Read it for yourself:[1]

Beyond fiscal rectitude and less spending, tea party candidates are targeting the central institutions of American government. The GOP Senate candidate from Kentucky, Rand Paul, is among several who want to abolish the Federal Reserve.

It’s true: whether the Fed survives or not (prediction: it will) will have ramifications on America’s economy. But those ramifications are unknown, and unknowable. The ramifications of Democrat policies — on health care, on the environment, on taxation — are far more obvious.

Another tea party target is the Internal Revenue Service. South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, who has emerged as the Senate’s leading tea party incumbent, says that his “main goal in the Senate will not only be to cut taxes, but to get rid of the IRS.”

Will business owners find that statement frightening? Or will they be curious about how DeMint means to replace the IRS? I think the latter.

Regardless, Reich is guilty of opportunistic editing. DeMint’s statement is 6 years old, and reads more fully:[2]

My main goal in the Senate will be not only to cut taxes, but to get rid of the IRS, to get rid of this tax code and replace it with something that’s fair and simple. This tax code is the biggest job killer in this country.

Scary, huh? Democrats offer uncertainty that will almost certainly cost more. No, I take that back: Democrat policies will cost more. The uncertainty lies in how much, and when?

Tea partiers aren’t just against R&D subsidies. Almost two-thirds of tea partiers in the Bloomberg poll said they’d be willing to reduce research funds for Alzheimer’s and other diseases to narrow the deficit…

R&D are good things, and individual business owners might oppose any such policy. As business owners, though, as a group, it doesn’t affect the bottom line. Unless the business is Alzheimer’s research or otherwise gets direct taxpayer-funded payments, that is.

…a similar proportion would consider cutting spending on roads and bridges.

Cutting until roads and bridges are no longer passable? Or cutting from current levels of overspending?

To Reich, see, all government spending is good. There is no such thing as overspending.

Wall Street may be furious with the Obama administration but at least Mr. Obama (and his predecessor) bailed it out. By contrast, tea party activists consider the Troubled Asset Relief Program a betrayal of America.

Support Democrats, all you business owners, or no more bailouts charged to your grandchildren!

Lesser known is that a higher proportion of tea party adherents believes that free trade agreements hurt the nation overall (61%) than does the general population (53%), according to a NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll last month.

Finally, an argument business owners may identify with. Economic isolationism is, indeed, a wrongheaded policy. Strange that Reich, a member of the “they’re so greedy they’re sending jobs overseas!” party, would make that argument.

Reich’s argument boils down to: oppose the Tea Party, businesses, or the government won’t be able to help you anymore!

The question business owners have to answer is: are they willing to risk accepting that government help, when it looks like…well, like the Obama administration?

The TrogloPundit[3]