Are Tea Party Republicans out to destroy our country?

With the debate over the debt limit, it sure seems that way.

In a rather simplistic capsule, here’s the problem we’re facing. The Treasury Department says, unless it can borrow more money, it’s going to be out of cash on or about Aug. 2. All monetary payments will come to a halt at that point. Trouble is, legislation sets a limit on how much money the United States is permitted to borrow and we have reached that ceiling. So, unless Congress agrees to raise that limit, additional borrowing is prohibited.

So why not just raise the ceiling? In addition, why not find ways to get additional income?

That’s where the Tea Party comes in. Rep. Barbara Bachmann, the leader of this group of right-wingnuts and a person I find more dangerous to national security than Osama Bin-Laden ever was, says the Treasury Department is controlled by President Obama and one should never believe a single word the President says. We are not really running out of money, she and her fellow jerks proclaim, the President is simply bluffing. So there’s no reason to raise the debt ceiling unless we completely dismantle Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and all other entitlement programs in the process. And, she adds, finding ways to get additional income is completely out of the question.

Rep. Joe Walsh of Illinois goes even further, recording a video in which he called the President a liar and in which he said “There’s plenty of money to pay off our debt and cover all our Social Security obligations.” He did not say, however, where that money might be.

There’s a minuscule chance Bachmann, Walsh and the rest of the Tea Party might be correct and, if they are, I will be the first person calling for Obama’s impeachment. He shouldn’t be playing chickie-run with the country’s economic future.

However, for some reason I trust the President far more than I trust Tea Party. And I really fear for the future of our free-market economy if the President is correct and no action isn’t taken to raise the debt limit within the next week.

But we need more than that. For some reason the Tea Party doesn’t realize that growth is required to restore the economy and the policies it is advocating will destroy jobs, much the same way the Bush economic policies did in getting us into the mess. So, how do we get growth?

This today from three-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Thomas L. Friedman:

“We don’t just need a plan for regaining American solvency. We need a plan for maintaining American greatness and sustaining the American dream for another generation,” argues Michael Mandelbaum, the Johns Hopkins University foreign policy expert (and co-author with me of a forthcoming book). “Such a plan requires cutting, taxing and spending. It requires cutting because we have made promises to ourselves on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid that we cannot keep without reforming each of them.”

But we cannot possibly generate the savings — or the new investments we need in our formula for success — by just taking funds from these social programs and shredding the social safety nets, adds Mandelbaum. “That would trigger a backlash against free-market capitalism. And free-market capitalism is the engine of our growth, and growth is the best way to reduce the deficit.”

That is why we need to raise new tax revenues as well — so we can simultaneously shrink the entitlements programs, but still keep them viable, and generate the funds needed to strengthen all five parts of our growth formula. Anyone who says that either entitlement reform or tax increases are off the table does not have a plan for sustaining American greatness and passing on the American dream to the next generation.

Alas, that is the Tea Party. It is so lacking in any aspiration for American greatness, so dominated by the narrowest visions for our country and so ignorant of the fact that it was not tax cuts that made America great but our unique public-private partnerships across the generations. If sane Republicans do not stand up to this Hezbollah faction in their midst, the Tea Party will take the G.O.P. on a suicide mission. No American politician was more allergic to debt or taxes than Thomas Jefferson, but he also appreciated the need to have the resources to make the Louisiana Purchase and insisted that on his tombstone it be written that he founded the University of Virginia.

It’s not going to take that long to see which side is correct. However, if it’s the administration and the economy begins to crumble next week, it will not be difficult to fix the blame for this catastrophe.

Plain and simple: The debt ceiling and all this other rhetoric the Tea Party is talking about are two, entirely separate, issues. During his eight years in office, President Reagan asked Congress for a straight up or down vote to raise the debt ceiling 18 times and 18 times Congress raised the ceiling. Bush the Junior asked for it and received it seven times. But now there’s a Democrat in the White House and a black Democrat to boot, and the Tea Party right-wingnuts are so determined to see him fail they are willing to destroy our economy and let millions of Americans to go without their Social Security payments and Medicare benefits, let soldiers, sailors and their families to go without pay, just to accomplish this personal vendetta.

So, to directly answer the question I posed in the headline: Yes, if it means the Tea Party can destroy the Presidency in the process. Their members don’t care about collateral damage in the form of lost jobs, destroyed businesses, increased home foreclosures, millions of more Americans going hungry and, yes, many others dying. They just don't care at all.

UPDATE: A number of individuals were correct in pointing out to me it's Michele, not Barbara, Bachmann. No idea what I was thinking of.