I find it so amusing that so many people are jumping on the Tea Party bandwagon as though they are saviors of our government. It’s the classic case of smoke and mirrors.
While preaching the outstanding values of the “common man,” nothing could be further from the truth. Consider these facts.

The Tea Party freshmen class is comprised of mostly millionaires, with a dozen or so reported to own assets valued into the eight figure territory in financial disclosure forms:

• Richard Hanna of upstate New York’s 24th district is worth between $11 million and $33 million amassed in the construction business.
• Norfolk Marine-turned-Volvo dealer-turned-restaurateur-turned-congressman Scott Rigell of Virginia reports a fortune worth between $11.6 million and $48.2 million.
• Nursing home operator and serial entrepreneur Rep. Jim Renacci of Columbus, Ohio has assets worth between $17.6 million and $39.9 million.
• Nan Hayworth of New York and Diane Black of Tennessee are both former medical professionals whose husbands got rich in the health care business; Scott Hayworth (HHNW: $9.5 – $23.3 million) runs the dominant medical group in upper Westchester County and Black’s (HHNW: $14.7 – 84.1 million) runs the country’s preeminent drug testing lab.
• North Dakota’s Rich Berg is a commercial real estate tycoon ($19.3 – $59 million) who served in the state legislature since 1985 before being elected to Congress.
• Two oilmen in the freshmen class are also filthy rich: New Mexico’s Stevan Pearce ($8.4 – $38 million) and the Lone Star State’s Blake Farenthold ($10.4 – $31.4 million).

But treat those disclosures as “living documents” since this Congressional class has a record of underestimating its own wealth. Back in 2002 Pearce sold an oil services firm he had valued at $1 – $5 million for $12 million, then under-reported the value of that sale by about half. Berg’s forms list his interests in dozens of commercial real estate properties but left out 46,000 shares he owns in an oil services investment firm in which he is a director. (Among other things, Berg supports allowing oil companies to drill in state parks to pay for Social Security.) Last year an Ohio judge ruled that Renacci had under-reported his 2006 income by some $14 million.

Even the Tea Partiers who claim to be broke don’t apparently mean that literally; after reporting personal assets worth zero dollars, Tennessee’s Stephen Fincher made headlines for having received $3.34 million in federal agriculture subsidies in recent years. Eventually he amended the form to include his cotton farm as an asset, estimating its value at $500,000. (South Dakota’s Kristi Noem has also collected more than $3 million in farm subsidies over the past decade, but her form only lists five assets worth somewhere between $33,000 and $145,000.)

It’s not hard to guess what these people see in Tea Party politics. Here is a movement united around an unfailing support of tax cuts for people like them, at a time in which poll after poll (23 polls, by one count) reveals the American electorate to be united by unprecedentedly broad-based support for doing the opposite.

Consider that every major tea party national candidate has taken the stance that Conservatives are fiscally responsible.
Oh, really? Where were they when George Bush piled on the national debt with two wars, a massive expansion of Medicare, and taxcuts for millionaires and billionaires? Or when Dick Cheney proclaimed, “deficits don’t matter”? It’s immoral to saddle our children with debt, they piously preach. Baloney. When they’re old enough to enjoy the great opportunities they’re given as Americans, our children will thank us for what we did build, not what we failed to build. Today’s Republicans only demand balanced budgets when Democrats are in power, but spend like mad when they’re in charge.

The Tea Party is built on a lie, and one that far too many are falling for. Until they can begin to speak truthfully, and establish their own agenda, rather than simply be a “follower” of the Republicans, they are useless, and dangerous to Democracy.

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