Washington disdains but kowtows to Tea Party

No, we are acting here as if the only real problem the United States confronts is the budget deficit; the only test of leadership is whether a president is willing to make big cuts in programs that protect the elderly; and the largest threat to our prosperity comes from public employees.

Take another five steps back and you realize how successful the Tea Party has been. No matter how much liberals may poke fun at them, Tea Party partisans can claim victory in fundamentally altering the country's dialogue.

Consider all the things Washington and the media are mostly ignoring. You haven't heard much lately on how Wall Street shenanigans tanked the economy in the first place - and in the process made a small number of people very rich. Yet any discussion of the problems caused by concentrated wealth (a vital mainstream issue in the America of Andrew Jackson and both Roosevelts) is confined to the academic or left-wing sidelines.

You haven't seen a lot of news stories describing the impact of long-term unemployment on people's lives or the difficulty working-class kids are encountering if they want to go to college.

You hear a lot about how much the government spends on the elderly, but not much about facts such as this one, courtesy of a report last fall from the Employee Benefit Research Institute: People older than 75 "were more likely than other age groups - including children under 18 - to live on incomes equal to or less than 200 percent of poverty."

Any analysis of the economic struggles many elderly people endure would get in the way of the "greedy geezer" story line being spun to justify big cuts in Medicare benefits and Social Security.

Thanks to the Tea Party, we are now told that all our problems will be solved by cutting government programs. Thus the House Republicans foresee nirvana if we simply reduce our spending on Head Start, Pell grants for college access, teen pregnancy prevention, clean water programs, K-12 education and a host of other areas.

Does anyone really think that cutting such programs will create jobs or help Americans get ahead?

In his State of the Union address, President Obama made a good case that budget cutting is too small an agenda and that this is also a time for more government - yes, more government - in areas that would expand opportunities and strengthen the economy. That argument has been entirely drowned out. If politics is reduced to a crabbed and crabby accountants' war, Obama loses. The country will, too.

E-mail E.J. Dionne Jr. at ejdionne@washpost.com.

This article appeared on page A - 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle

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