The Tea Party Just Doesn’t Get It

Earlier this year, a young mother of two, Kelly Eubanks, attended a town hall for Congressman Steve Womack, a Republican from Arkansas. Womack had recently voted to slash Pell Grant funding to 100,000 low income students, including Kelly Eubanks. Kelly asked Womack about his vote, and he told her to join the military to pay her own way, like he did.

Over the past 4 years, the Tea Party has blazed a trail for ignorance like no other group in modern history. Steve Womack telling Kelly Eubanks that by joining the military in order to take advantage of the GI Bill is “paying her own way” is just another example of the Tea Party having no understanding of the way government works.

The GI Bill has sent tens of thousands of men and women to college, using tax payer money. Using the GI Bill to attend college is not doing it on your own. Doing it on your own is making the honor roll all through high school in order to receive academic scholarships, working 2 jobs while in college, and perhaps taking out one or two student loans which you pay back. That’s doing it on your own. The GI Bill, being funded entirely by the federal government, is much like a Pell Grant. The Pell Grants Steve Womack voted to cut.

Members of the Tea Party are predominantly white, retired, conservative and middle to upper middle class. We’ve all seen the signs that read “Keep your government hands off my Medicare,” and heard Tea Partiers rail against tax payer funded programs like SNAP. What Tea Partiers don’t seem to realize is that Medicare is payed for with taxes, and the majority if Americans who are using food stamps and welfare programs are, in fact, white.

The Tea Party also seems to have no problem giving billions of dollars in tax moneyto the Pentagon. Congress has continued to support defense spending, even while the Pentagon says they don’t need or want it. And the Tea Party constantly states they want smaller government. Remember the famous Grover Norquist quote about shrinking the government down enough to drown it in a bathtub? Well, the Tea Party agrees, unless, of course, any of that drowning affects them.

New roads, parks, traffic lights, street lights, police, firefighters, Social Security, Medicare, maintaining national parks, fishing and hunting licenses, tax-exempt status for Christian churches, defending DOMA, making sure American women have no access to birth control, abortion, or, in the wishful thoughts of Nikki Haley, rape crisis centers and subsidies for oil companies are all tax-payer funded, and the Tea Party has no problem with that whatsoever.

What are these programs then, that the Tea Party hates so much? Primarily, they are programs to help the poor, programs to help students and public sector jobs. Maybe it would be a good idea to remove police and firefighters from the list of things Tea Partiers don’t mind paying for, since, according to Mitt Romney and Rush Limbaugh, those people just drain the economy and we don’t need any more. Oh, and they hate teachers. Education is evil, have you noticed that? Teachers should be teaching the Christian bible (not any other “holy” book, just the bible), creationism, abstinence-based sex “education,” and basic math and reading. Science is evil, and since the Tea Party believes, much like Rick Santorum, that secular colleges brainwash children, Tea Party kids will be working at Wal-Mart or Chick-Fil-A right out of high school until they retire, angry and bitter just like Mom and Dad.

What the Tea Party does not seem to have any problem with is the inequality in America when it comes to paying taxes. The average American family has a 25-28% tax rate. Mitt Romney had a 14.7% tax rate in 2011. We pay more taxes that a man who is worth, minimum, a quarter of a BILLION dollars. He has $100 million in an IRA. Unless he “retroactively” began contributing to said IRA in 1786, there is no way that’s possible. But the Tea Party doesn’t care. They don’t care that Mitt Romney used to be pro-marriage equality and pro-choice, they care that now he will defend DOMA, making it permanent, close down Planned Parenthood and reverse Roe V Wade. They don’t care that he wants to invade Iran, hates China, insulted an entire country and scheduled a fundraising dinner during one of the Jewish religion’s most high holy days, while actually IN Israel.

The Tea Party cares that Mitt Romney is white, hates all the same things they do, is a Christian (Mormon, but they’re chosen to completely overlook the bizarre qualities of Mormonism out of respect for his whiteness), will blow up brown-skinned people, who they all believe are evil terrorists (using tax dollars), let them keep their guns, force public schools to teach Christian dogma (using tax dollars), make women stay pregnant no matter what and keep gay people from getting married (using tax dollars).

To the Tea Party, taxes are perfectly fine if they pay to hurt people they don’t like, kill people of whom they are desperately afraid or allow them to live the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. Other than that, taxes are horrible, and nasty and our Founding Fathers never wanted us to pay taxes. Unless, of course, you read the 16th Amendment:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

I guess we have to add The Constitution to the list of things the Tea Party doesn’t understand.

Thanks to Newsvine and Wikipedia for contributions to this article.

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