R.I.P Tea Party

The main thrust of the Tea Party movement was to shrink the size of government. But as we see both at the local level and nationally, a tipping point has been reached.

Government cannot be downsized. It will resist all efforts to be reasonable.

Even with the economic downturn, you can’t “starve the beast.” Governments won’t contract with the economy; they’re too entrenched and too powerful. More government and higher taxes are inevitable.

Alas, we’re just getting what we asked for. Government is so pervasive in our lives that despite all the anti-government rhetoric from the Tea Party and others, nobody really wants to see it shrink.

In Barrow County, like a lot of counties, government is the number one employer. If you add together all the jobs in our towns, county and schools, government is by far bigger than any other sector of the local economy. Add to that those who are employed by the state and federal governments, and the result is a huge percentage of people here work for government at some level. Just about every local family has at least one member who works for a government agency.

But it’s even larger than that. Add in the number of people drawing some kind of government benefit, either through welfare, subsidized housing, Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.

It’s huge. By far, over half of the people in the nation depend on government in some way for their livelihood.

There’s no turning back. Any effort to cut the size, scope and expense of government will fail because so many people are suckling off the teats of government.

We have become a welfare state, a nation where people are increasingly dependent on Big Brother for every aspect of their lives. We want government to take care of us, to meet our every need and to give us money.

We talk a lot about the massive debt of the federal government, but we really don’t want it cut. To cut the national debt would mean cutting our own benefits and salaries. We give lip service to getting spending under control, but we don’t mean it.

We can’t even keep spending under control in our small town governments. Look at the fiasco of Winder’s recent pay raises. That was done without any analysis and without any thought by city leaders. It was a knee-jerk move driven by politics. (Add to that the city’s generous healthcare benefits for city employees and you will see the real costs involved.)

As reported last week by this newspaper, those raises meant that several city employees got two raises during 2011. One city employee got nearly $10,000 in raises during the last year.

If we can’t keep local government spending under control, then how in the world can we expect to control state or federal spending?

The truth is, we can’t. There are too many people with their fingers in the pie.

At the same time governments at all levels are growing, the private sector’s ability to create jobs and pay the growing tax burden is shrinking. We have exported many of our manufacturing jobs overseas. And increasing government regulations have made doing business in this country more and more difficult. At the same time government is growing, the private sector’s ability to create wealth is shrinking.

Perhaps if government were more responsive to the needs of its citizens, there would be more acceptance of this welfare state we now live in.

But that’s not the case. There is massive fraud and abuse in our welfare programs. There has been large amounts of cheating in some of our school systems (Atlanta, Albany for example) and if not cheating, then pervasive educational mediocrity.

And then there is the failure of traffic planning in Atlanta and other metro areas, and the absurdity of TSA in our airports. In Georgia’s higher education system, there is a massive amount of wasted time and effort, along with salaries that defy any kind of common sense.

Locally, Barrow County can’t get its problems with county fire and EMS straightened out even after months of turmoil. We pay a lot in taxes for all of these things, but we’re not always getting what we pay for.

Of course, there are some government agencies that are doing a good job and are efficient. The one area in local government that is probably underfunded is law enforcement. Compared to desk-bound bureaucrats, cops make very little.

Alas, it’s too late now to change the growth in government spending. Any politician who runs for office who says he wants to control the size and expense of government won’t get elected. Too many people depend on government and won’t vote for any candidate who wants to cut the back on the gravy train.

R.I.P. Tea Party. You were a good idea, but you came too late.

Mike Buffington is Co-Publisher of the Barrow Journal. He can be reached at mike@mainstreetnews.com.