By JOAN McCOY
Leader staff writer
Second District Cong. Tim Griffin (R-Little Rock) spoke to a full house Monday night for the regular monthly meeting of the nine-month-old Jacksonville-Cabot Tea Party, telling his audience that the Republican fix for the ever-growing deficit that passed the House of Representatives in April will likely not be approved by the Democratic Senate and President Obama.
He came with pie charts, graphs and a message about how Social Security and Medicare, the parts of the budget that are mandatory because they are set by law, are larger than the $2.2 trillion tax income to run the federal government. So cutting spending on military, education, infrastructure, foreign aid or any other part of the discretionary budget won’t bring the deficit under control.
“If all the discretionary spending was cut, we’d still be in debt,” Griffin said.
Cutting foreign aid to control the deficit is tantamount to having your HBO shut off because you can’t afford your house payment, he said. It would be a start, but it wouldn’t be enough to pay that much larger bill.
The crowd, which was obviously filled with many of the people who helped put him in office almost five months ago, didn’t like all they were hearing.
One man objected to the terminology. Using mandatory and discretionary disguised the real problem, he said. There are too many young people drawing Social Security checks, he said.
The congressman said he had a point and acknowledged that the charts weren’t going over as well as he thought they would.
He also conceded that waste, fraud and abuse had to be addressed, but he said unless Medicare is revamped soon, there will be nothing left to work with.
He issued this statement on May 13 following a report that day by the Medicare trustees that the trust fund will be exhausted by 2025, five years sooner than had been projected.
“Today’s report confirms what we have known for some time. The biggest threat to ‘Medicare as we know it’ is to maintain the status quo and do nothing. If we do nothing, Medicare goes bankrupt and sooner than we thought. Our House Medicare reform plan is needed now more than ever. It keeps our promise to current seniors, 55 and older, and saves Medicare for future generations.”
The plan would shift Medicare from a public program to private.
“I really believe we can get our hands around this,” he told his audience Monday evening. “If none of us believe we could do this, why would I be up here making you mad by showing you charts?”
Griffin also wanted to talk about terminology. He said he doesn’t like to talk about the deficit.
“It’s not a deficit problem; it’s a spending problem,” he said.
A deficit can be dealt with in two ways, he said. You can cut spending or raise taxes. Cutting spending is the better of the two. And he had a chart to illustrate his point. Countries that have tried to get out of debt by raising taxes have failed. Those that have cut spending have succeeded.
“What we ultimately have is a discipline problem,” he said. “I’ve been around politicians long enough to know that if a politician thinks an action will lead to his defeat, he won’t do it…. If you give more tax money to the politicians, they’ll spend it.”
The meeting lasted about two hours.
In answer to questions from the audience about what they could do, Griffin said they should go online, learn all they can about the growing debt, tell their friends and try to influence their lawmakers.
Billy Johnston, who helped start the Jacksonville-Cabot Tea Party, said later he was pleased with the meeting.
“(Griffin) was very informative,” Johnston said. “He was very receptive to hard questions.”
“Everyday people have got to get involved in this,” he said. “We’ve got to get up off our couches and get something done.”
