Black Lawmaker Says It’s Time to Take a Page From the Tea Party Playbook
The House of Representatives, in a vote of 235–193, passed a Republican-sponsored 2012 budget proposal. Like so much of the legislation the House has passed in the past 100 days, it’s more symbolic than anything else—dead on arrival in the Senate and sure to be vetoed by President Obama if by some miracle it ever makes it that far.
Republicans say the bill would overhaul Medicaid and Medicare and cut $6.2 trillion over 10 years. But according to Democrats, it steals from the poor to give to the rich; every single one of them and four Republicans voted against it.
“It’s a terrible and shameful budget that clearly cuts [from the] lower-income, middle-income, the young and especially seniors. And the real shameful fact of that budget is that all the while they’re giving over $1 trillion to millionaires and billionaires,” said Rep. David Scott (D-Georgia). “You’re going to put 55,000 Head Start teachers on the unemployment rolls and at the same time give a trillion dollars to the [wealthy]? It’s an insult to the American people.”
It’s time to go Tea Party on the GOP, he said, and do to that budget what Republicans and the Tea Party did to what they like to refer to as Obamacare. Lawmakers will spend the next two weeks in their districts, and Scott says they need to get their constituents fired up to express their outrage over the budget. They especially need to target Republican members whose reluctant support for the bill could make them vulnerable in 2012 because they represent many of the constituencies that stand to lose benefits and services because of the bill, including African-Americans.
“We can take a page from the Tea Party,” Scott said. “We have to rally the American people, especially those who understand that what the Republican budget is doing is trying to pay down the debt and cut the deficit on the backs of the low-income, the middle-income and the seniors. They have to stand up and oppose that.”
(Photo:Chip Somodevilla/Getty)