Tea party didn’t prompt downgrade

Tea party didn’t prompt downgrade

Judging from the Daily Herald’s “Our View” article of Aug. 9 and Kathleen Parker’s article of the same date along with a couple of Fence Post letter writers, the tea party is practically treasonous for “obstructing Congress,” which directly caused Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the U.S. credit rating causing the stock market to crash on Aug. 8.

Everyone join in now, “Shame on the tea party.” What rubbish. Has everyone hit their heads? S&P downgraded the U.S. credit rating not because of the Congressional deadlock, but because of the size of the U.S. debt., which the Republicans created through war spending and unfair tax loopholes for large corporations, and which the Democrats escalated with uncontrolled entitlements.

Probably the only thing that kept Moody’s Ratings from following Standard & Poor’s lead was the tea party’s insistence on deeper cuts and putting real teeth in the debt ceiling plan.

The stock market crash is the inevitable consequence of government’s irresponsible fiscal policies. The tea party stepped in to finally hold government accountable for its actions and to a better extent than both Republicans and Democrats alone could have accomplished, they succeeded. All this finger pointing at the tea party is just absurd misdirection and scapegoating.

Brian Van Dine

Carol Stream