MAKING TIME TO DO THE IMPOSSIBLE

Very strange is the contemporary treatment of the tea party.

Democrats – and much of the news media -- treat it as a villain of deepest depravity; many Republicans see it as an obstructionist power.

But in reality, is not the tea party a popular movement having little organization that seeks to encourage politicians to operate the government in accord with the Constitution? Supporters, who are not active in the movement, seem to view the tea party as such. The perceived goal is not pernicious but rather patriotic.

Critics of the tea party from all sides focus on congressional Representative and Senators who were elected to do something about unrestrained public spending and the debt that precipitates for trying to deliver on their campaign promises. In recent political maneuvering they hung tough in an effort to make progress on their goals. They were excoriated for ignoring the solidified voting of a Senate bloc and a spin-driven President, and for not joining the Republican establishment’s recognizing that reality.

Under the system, the constituents who in the 2012 elected voices in both houses heard their concerns raised in the Congress. What is wrong with that?

George Will in a recent column uses an article by Jonathan Rauch in National Affairs quarterly on James Madison’s design of the U.S. government. Wills argues that President Obama wants to change Madison’s plan by wielding legislative branch rubber stamps to his fiats, while the tea party defies the Founder’s design though intransigence.

A fair reading of tea party goals is this: enough government by the consent of the governed to permit people to live in freedom at a public cost  they can afford.

There’s nothing unreasonable about that.

But finding such balance in the country’s current condition involves a philosophical clash of politicians loath to confront legislated federal aid obligations that grow in cost without legislative restraint. Those obligations are called entitlements.

That term in itself explains the problem. A congressional search for reduced tax burdens caused by guaranteed claims absent rancor becomes neigh on impossible.

As the Seabees said in WW II, the difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes a little longer.

How much time do we have?