GOP Facing Tea Party Revolt

A stunning Congressional Budget Office report revealing that the so-called $38 billion in budget cuts made last week will only result in $352 million in savings this year has touched off a backlash from the conservative grass-roots base of the GOP that could make future bargains that much more difficult.

Several top tea party leaders are trying to ease the frustration, reminding the tea party faithful that Republicans only control the House of Representatives. But the antipathy on the right with how Washington does business is now palpable.

Even though congressional leaders were able to squeeze the continuing resolution through Congress on Thursday, the questionable insider dealing, combined with President Barack Obama’s partisan speech on entitlement reform on Wednesday, could make future compromises on the debt ceiling and the 2012 budget much harder to achieve, sources say.

Obama intimated the reforms proposed by Wisconsin GOP Rep. Paul Ryan were un-American.  Ryan replied that Obama has become a “campaigner in chief.”

“I’m hearing a lot of anger and frustration frankly,” Memphis Tea Party founder and chairman Mark Skoda, who is also a conservative talk-radio host, tells Newsmax. “Yesterday on the radio I had a number of folks call in, primarily [saying] that [House Speaker John] Boehner needs to fire his staff, that the deal that was cut is a terrible deal. I don’t think people are throwing in the towel for Republicans … but they got rolled.”

Sal Russo, the founder of Tea Party Express, says movement conservatives are “profoundly disappointed” by the 2011 budget deal. He tells Newsmax the arrangement marks “another failure to address excessive federal government spending and our skyrocketing national debt.”

Tea Party Express Chairman Amy Kremer, similarly, tells Newsmax that the deal struck by House Republicans was an “embarrassment.”

“I am very disappointed and fed up with Washington's politics as usual,” she adds, “The American people are smarter than Washington thinks, and we have lost patience with their shenanigans.

But Russo adds that it is time for the grass-roots to move past the 2011 budget that Democrats failed to pass, and to begin to focus on the much larger battles that lie ahead.

“The 2011 budget deal has become meaningless in the fight to curtail the increasing intrusiveness and cost of the federal government,” says Russo. “We hope this is a lesson to the Republican leaders to stand fast in opposing raising the debt ceiling, if the only plan from Democrats is to raise taxes and keep us on the spending merry-go-round.”

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