For Tea Party Winners, Now Comes the Hard Part

Mike Lee and his and his wife Sharon.

/ AP

The Tea Party candidates being swept into office Tuesday - in the Senate they include Kentucky's Rand Paul, Florida's Marco Rubio and Utah's Mike Lee - now face a challenge far more daunting than simply winning an election. Once in office, they must work to take their rhetoric about cutting spending, offered with little detail during the campaign, and transform it into legislative action.

It won't be easy. Consider the promises of Utah's Mike Lee, who said at one point he thought it necessary to cut federal spending by 40 percent to balance the budget. It's nearly impossible to imagine how this could happen.

Here's why: In 2010, 20 percent of the $3.6 trillion federal budget went to defense, 20 percent to Social Security and 21 percent to Medicare, Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program. While lawmakers could potentially make some cuts to these programs, they simply aren't going to try to cut them completely -- unless they're looking to commit mass political suicide. (Even perhaps the most unapologetic Tea Party candidate, Nevada's Sharron Angle, retreated from her early promise to phase out Social Security during the campaign.)

Let's be generous and say Republicans would try to cut five percent of the budget from these areas next year. That means almost all of the remaining budget would need to be cut to meet that 40 percent threshold. That includes interest on the national debt, which is six percent of the budget and which America presumably needs to pay.

It also includes the 19 percent of federal spending that goes largely to "providing health care and other benefits to veterans and retirement benefits to retired federal employees, assuring safe food and drugs, protecting the environment, and investing in education, scientific and medical research, and basic infrastructure such as roads, bridges, and airports," as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities writes.

Rand Paul.

The rest of the budget - which also, keep in mind, would almost entirely have to be cut to meet Lee's target - goes to safety net programs like food stamps, school meals and low-income housing assistance.

Paul, from Kentucky, has promised to "vote against and filibuster any unbalanced budget." Yet he and other Tea Party candidates want to balance the budget while extending the Bush-era tax cuts for all Americans, including the highest-earners. (The Obama administration wants to extend them for all but roughly the top two percent of Americans.) That would mean $4 trillion less coming into the Treasury over the next ten years, according to the Washington Post, and make a balanced-budget that much more difficult to achieve.

Now, Tea Party candidates will be a small percentage of Congress overall. But their passionate supporters are going to expect to see them attempt to keep their campaign promises, and the GOP (even those members keeping the Tea Party at arm's length) knows it can't afford to alienate what has become a crucial voting bloc. So that means we can safely expect some sort of move to make dramatic budget cuts.

But what? The specific budget cuts in the GOP's Pledge to America - presumably the guiding principle for the House now that Republicans have taken over - do not come close to the sort of deep cuts necessary to balance the budget. Republicans could call for deeper cuts, but that means a spotlight on specific proposed cuts that might not play well with many Americans.

So while Tea Party candidates presently have plenty of reason to celebrate, they will face a daunting task when they take office in January. Like so many politicians before them -- Mr. Obama springs to mind -- they come into office carrying lofty rhetoric that will be exceedingly difficult to transform into reality.

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Brian Montopoli is a political reporter for CBSNews.com. You can read more of his posts here. Follow Hotsheet on Facebook and Twitter.

[nsitom]

Balancing our budget can be done, just look at the last time the GOP assumed power,
1. Cut the defense budget 5-10% a year over 4 years
2. Cut the federal pay (which, on average, is almost twice that of the private sector) across the board by 5% a year for 4 years
3. Cut the federal payroll across the board by 5% a year for 4 years
4. Freeze social security increases(of which I receive) for 4 years
5. True Medicare reform including Tort reform and allowing Medicare and Medicaid to negotiate with drug companies for lower prices
6. ZERO Earmarks
7. Freeze any federal regulation (including, and especially EPA) that has a negative affect on jobs for 3 years
8. End corporate welfare. A good start is ethanol.
9. Look at the totality of government and cut entire departments starting with Energy ( which has had a negative affect on production of energy) and education ( which has not educated a single student and is a function better served on a state or local level)

The company that I worked for survived by cutting payroll by 30% and pay by 10%. I was negatively affected but I understood their reasoning. American business has cut spending over the past few years to survive. The government can do the same,

[WillyT513]

I forgot to add, another blatant lack of understanding of the Tea Party movement by the author.......we are well aware that the immediate impact of our new Reps and Senators will be limited. This election is only the first step, but at least it stops the liberal agenda in its tracks.

[Just_Wonder]

Willy - you are naive to think that the Tea Party candidates have stopped the "liberal agenda in its tracks." The Dems still hold the Senate and the White House. More importantly all these new Senators and Representatives are freshman and will wield no power in either houses. The GOP leadership in the House and the Democratic leadership in the Senate will still be in charge and they are not Tea Party members. They first and foremost are members and leaders of legacy political parties and they are not about to take direction from freshman. Sure the GOP was thrilled to have the Tea Party help unseat the Dems from power, but that should no way imply that they are willing to cede power to the newbys. In the end if the GOP wishes to be successful in 2012 they will have to show progress which will require compromise with the Dems. The first Tea Party Senator or Rep that bucks the party leadership will find themselves relegated to a minor role on an insignificant sub-committee.

[WillyT513]

Perfect example of liberal media bias, and lack of any economic common sense.

Any Tea Party supporter is well aware that balancing our budget will require reforms in both entitlement and defense spending. As for the other discretionary programs, there is plenty of wasteful spending that we can cut.

As for railing against tax cuts, the author clearly shows the intelligence of an economic child. Raising the tax rates on the top 2% would only affect the top 2% directly, but since 2/3rds of those are small businesses, it indirectly affects their ability to hire new employees and even retain current employees. So raise tax rates on small business and kill job growth, effectively killing your own tax base.

JFK, Reagan, Clinton & Bush all understood this, and by lowering high income tax rates, and note that this is only keeping them at the same level, you motivate the job creators to grow our economy. As a result they are willing to take risks to grow their businesses, creating new jobs and spurring the economy, ultimately leading to an increase in tax revenues to the government. Its happened every time......and liberals act like they are smart, lol.

[noloyalisti]

The same bozos who caused this budget mess now have to fix it.

And our "health" care system is badly broken. We pay double and get much less. The new plan passed by Dems SAVES $138 billion a year and cover 30 million more people. More socialism, more.

[cringe]

Can't be done. Frank is no longer Chairman of his long-held committee, Dodd is gone ... so neither of them (the bozos to which you refer)can fix the mess they made with Fannie and Freddy.

ObamaCare as you praise it is going, going, gone.

[clemenhagen1]

Break down the numbers on who favors repealing health care. The vast majority who faver ending this "socialist scourge" on America? Senior citizens who enjoy the benefits of our most socialist of entitlement programs: Medicare. Classic hypocrisy brought to you by Faux News and the rest of the Right-Wing Echo Chamber.

[clemenhagen1]

Defense spending is at over 700 billion per year (counting the wars, which Obama made part of the budget). This total constitutes more than half of all military spending world-wide. We spend more than the entire rest of the world combined! Can we seriously address our deficits without addressing this area? All the earmarks in the world (approx. 20 billion per year) don't touch it. Neither does "slashing" spending if it does not address tax-cuts, defense, and health care cost (Medicare).

[clemenhagen1]

The Republicans have advocated "cut/go" - all new spending be balanced by cuts in other programs. Fine. However, they will not reinstitute "pay/go" which would entail cutting spending to offset tax-cuts. Extending the Bush tax-cuts will cost three to four trillion over the next decade. How do Republicans propose to offset this? With defense cuts? Medicare cuts? The fact they have no plan proves how cynical they really are when it comes to the facade of being deficit hawks.

[pasha128]

The Tea Party plans -- to make their Republican counterparts look like leftist appeasers and further purge the RINO's from the ranks of the Republicans.

[Turbidite]

The Teabaggers and their like-minded Republicans found that after years of looting the so-called "lockbox" of Social Security they are now trying to get out of filling it back up by eliminating it. There is a word for this....it is called thievery, and a cowardly thievery at that.

[nsitom]

Listen Turdbite, the "lockbox" was ended by the Democrat Lyndon Johnson when he included the Social Security funds in the General Budget to fund his Great Society. This was the start of the of insolvency of our Social Security system.
Take a bath, hold off on the reefer for a while and go to a Tea Party event. You will see real middle class Americans concerned with the future of their children and grandchildren.

[jimangel1]

Why do you state in your article that cutting government spending by 40% is "nearly impossible"? If the government did not have it to spend in the first place they could not spend it. The truth is that for many decades the government has been bleeding the citizens and choking the opportunities for people, not the government, to create jobs and generate tax revenue in that manner.

President Kennedy cut taxes and the economy grew, as did President Reagan. The more people who are working, the larger the tax base, so the lesser amount of taxes per person is necessary. But when we find governement grants for frivolous projects and a speaker of the house and president's wife taking trips at the taxpayers' expense, there is ample supply to cut, cut, cut the federal spending.

There is no reason that these people can't pay their own fares!