Parsing the tea-party logic

The tea partyers aren't crazy. Maybe they're just living in an alternate universe.

I went to one of those tea-party tax protests last week and found it didn't fit the crudest media stereotypes. They were friendly, not a bunch of whack jobs in training for the militia, as they are sometimes portrayed.

The ones I met didn't even seem all that angry.

But: I do wonder if the tea partyers and I live on the same planet.

For instance, several speakers inspired the crowd with stories about how the most courageous and noble people left are the capitalists. Because they bravely walk the road of struggle against a powerful, socialistic bureaucracy.

And I'm thinking — didn't the capitalists just nearly destroy capitalism? Only to be saved by the socialists?

Didn't all that happen just a year and a half ago?

Then there's the matter of taxes.

"Born Free, Taxed to Death," read one tea-party sign. "Tax Slaves Unite," said another. "Welcome to France," read a third.

That was a strong theme — the way our Marxist government incessantly gropes in our pockets for more of our hard-earned money.

A cry went up: "Taxes Suck!"

Yes they do. But here's something else about taxes, at least the federal kind. Did you know that total federal tax receipts, as a percentage of the size of the economy (gross domestic product), are now the lowest in 60 years?

You have to travel back to 1950 for a time when the feds sucked so little of the economy up in taxes. We now pay only 6.4 percent of GDP in individual income taxes, more than a third lower than 10 years ago. Corporate income taxes are the lowest since 1936.

(To see this data, go to the U.S. Government Printing Office Web site of historic budget tables, www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy11/hist.html, and click on Table 2.3.)

These factoids won me no love at the Taxed Enough Already (TEA) rally.

But they're true. Multiple rounds of tax-cutting since 2000, spanning both Republican and Democratic presidents, have been so thorough that half of Americans now pay no individual income taxes.

Hurray! We're not France after all. We're Monaco!

OK, not exactly. Last year 14.8 percent of the U.S. economy went to all federal taxes (which includes Social Security and Medicare taxes). That's hardly nothing, but it's a lot less than a decade ago.

So what, exactly, are these protesters protesting?

Bryan Suits, a talk-radio host on conservative AM station 570 KVI, is, he says, "one of the angry taxpayers." He spoke at last week's rally. I told him I don't follow the tea-party logic, so he agreed to be a guide.

It's the spending, stupid, he said. Suits, to his credit, acknowledged taxes have gotten lower. What rankles him is the way the money is used. The bailouts. The huge stimulus package. The new entitlement program created by the health-care bill.

"If I paid only one dollar in federal taxes, I'd still be outraged by the AIG bailout or the GM takeover," he said.

It's also the reckless and unsustainable deficits.

All right, now we're getting somewhere. I'm with Suits on that last part about the deficits, so much so I could just about sign up for the tea party.

Or I could if the tea party were serious.

The trouble is, they don't have much appetite for cutting Medicare, Social Security or military spending. They want even lower taxes. Put these views together and the math says the budget can't balance. Even if you eliminate 100 percent of everything else.

So what they fall back on are old gimmicks, such as a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution.

The tea party's focus on deficits is right on. But it needs to get real. It needs a Ross Perot-like figure to spell out an honest plan — one that's probably going to have both tax increases and spending cuts (as Bill Clinton pushed through).

Also, drop the red-scare rhetoric. And run as fast as you can from bumper-sticker simpletons like Sarah Palin.

Otherwise, this tea party's stuck in Wonderland.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.