Tea Party Impact on Debt Ceiling Plan Lauded by Bayshore Activist

As Congressional Republicans and Democrats struggled to reach a compromise between plans to raise the debt ceiling while still cutting spending, a familiar refrain echoed from freshman members representing the Tea Party and their constituents: there should be no compromise on increased spending.

Despite warnings that a failure to raise the debt ceiling would jeopardize the nation's credit rating, trigger higher interest rates for consumers and delay Social Security checks, Tea Party legislators largely held their ground, even bucking Republican House leadership by rejecting proposals from House Speaker John Boehner.

According to Barbara Gonzalez, founder of the Middletown-based Bayshore Tea Party Group, this is exactly what the American public wanted. Any resulting chaos was simply the byproduct of a necessary confrontation after years of increased spending by Congress.

The compromise plan signed into law by President Barack Obama raises the debt ceiling, but calls for more than $2 trillion in cuts over two phases in the next decade. The agreement to include those cuts underlines the influence of the Tea Party.

Criticism of the Tea Party's tactics only serves as evidence that the establishment is feeling the pressure and that the Tea Party is doing what’s right, Gonzales said.

“This is about our children, this is about our grandchildren,” Gonzalez said of the need to cut spending. “I could easily sit back and live the rest of my life, but this isn’t about me, this is about our future.”

The Bayshore Tea Party Group was established in 2009 and has made news in part for its activism and an ongoing lawsuit over local redistricting maps Gonzalez says are unconstitutional and little more than gerrymandering. Though the group is located in an area that has frequently sent Democrats to Congress, Gonzalez said the group and its support is growing.

It comes down to spending, she said. Americans are tired of it and they’ve decided enough is enough. In her view, there is just too much bloated government and public financing of special interests and failed programs. Spending hasn’t helped revive the economy and it hasn’t helped job growth, she said. Therefore the obvious cure is do the opposite and reduce spending.

To get to a balanced budget, Gonzalez said, everything should be on the chopping block, including the funding of wars and other defense costs that have contributed significantly to the country’s more than $14 trillion deficit.

Gonzalez said the recent spending compromise was a bittersweet victory for the Tea Party because it includes an increase in the debt ceiling. She acknowledged that the debt ceiling has been raised more than 70 times in the past 50 years by both Democrats and Republicans but said it eventually needs to stop.

She expressed surprise at criticism of elected Tea Party Congressional members by other elected representatives, including Rep. Rush Holt (D-12) who issued a statement explaining his vote against the compromise plan, saying that it was not only flawed but also tainted because it resulted from the Tea Party holding the country "hostage." National media outlets quoted Vice President Joe Biden as repeating Democratic House members' references to Tea Party members as "terrorists," a reference the White House later repudiated.

Gonzales said she can accept divisiveness in politics but other legislators need to realize that Tea Party officials represent the interests of the American voters who put them into office.

“We are citizens,” she said. “It was American citizens who elected (Tea Party legislators) to office.”