Michael Meacher MP

It now seems likely that the 20-strong no-compromise Tea Party core, with its ideological fixation on massive spending cuts and no increase in taxation, not now and not ever, will tilt the US over the brink into default and likely credit downgrade.   This is tragically ironic for two reasons.   The biggest part of the £14.3tn US deficit derives from Republican President Bush’s monstrous tax cuts for the rich and starting two decade-long wars costing $4tn.   Even more tragically ironic is the fact that the fundamental problem for the US economy at the present time isn’t high spending, but a wholesale lack of demand, and the $2-3tn spending cuts demanded by the Tea Party Taliban as a condition for raising the debt ceiling will only make the feeble state of demand even more sickly.   Worse still an incipient Tea Party Tendency is already taking shape in Britain. (more…)