Now let me review the bidding: As I understand it, Tea Party legislators are holding their fellow Republicans’ feet to the fire (and, therefore, all of America’s) and are demanding a ransom... to be agreed to before they will consent to consider raising the national debt ceiling... and what is it they want? What do they say must to be fixed: Government and Employment. Their first catch phrase is, “shrink government.” The second has something to do with shrinking the percentage of unemployed people in America (people unemployed in a recession brought on my the failed economic policies of a previous administration).

It doesn’t take a Harvard or Princeton economist to figure out that shrinking government means dismissing people from their jobs in government, putting more people who now have employment as civil servants (don’t you love the phrase?) and sticking them in the pool of unemployed Americans. People who are out of work don’t have money to spend unless they are fortunate folks who don’t need jobs anyway. People who don’t have money to spend can’t go to the grocery store or to the department store or the car dealership to buy what they would buy if they had jobs. The stores, including the small businesses which Tea Party people say they want to save, won’t have the customers they need to stay in business... and the economy will slow further.

Let’s take a look at another government expenditure that’s a favorite target of the Tea Party. Receiving money to operate from federal, state, and local governments, schools are perhaps the most obvious business of government in every community. From people who have apparently forgotten what most teachers do, a common description of people in the teaching profession is that they are lazy, lay-about persons who are in teaching in the first place because of “high” salaries and long vacations. Wow! ...not my experience at all, and I spent most of my working life with teachers... and students... and parents. By cutting teachers out of schools and slashing programs to save money, besides depriving students of valuable experiences which can help them develop into appropriately educated citizens who have skills and understanding to sustain a healthy society and a healthy economy, dismissing teachers pushes them and other school personnel into the ranks of the unemployed. Like unemployed civil servants, unemployed school personnel don’t have money to spend to support the small and large businesses and industries that are the economic life-blood of communities everywhere.

For a long time America has been the very best place in the world to live. Ask anybody. My parents were young and middle-aged adults during the Hoover, Roosevelt and Truman administrations. Besides growing up in a family that was upwardly mobile in economic terms, I had the tremendous advantage of being an adolescent and young adult beginning in the early-50s when Dwight D. Eisenhower was President of the United States. President Eisenhower, a Republican, was convinced that, among other public works projects, a costly interstate highway system would be worthwhile because it would open America up to economic development and would be an effective driver of the economy while the highways were being built. His administration made a tremendous push to make American schools more effective at doing what schools are meant to do. I was a young English and history/geography teacher beginning in 1957. What an exciting time that was. We knew our country was growing the right way and becoming better. We had enthusiasm and hope, and our students caught the spirit of a brighter future from us and from their parents. I was convinced that I had chosen the best profession for me, and my enthusiasm had nothing to do with the money or time-off. My first salary was $4200 for the 1957-58 school year. Along with teaching six periods a day, I drove a school bus to make a little extra money. I remember not minding the extra work, being glad for it. I spent the time off in summer doing graduate work and picking peaches and doing a night shift in the Del Monte Cannery in Yuba City. I actually thought I was just about the luckiest guy alive. My colleagues were as glad as I was to have a job worth doing.

Anybody who has talked with a teacher in the summer of 2011 knows that the American school world has shifted. In June many teachers were given pink slips informing them that they may not have a job at the end of summer because city, county, and state governments either don’t have budgets yet or that the budgets that have been approved drastically cut funding for schools. In many districts class sizes will be larger and in some the school year will be shortened. Salaries for teachers who still have jobs have been frozen in many districts. Insurance and retirement benefits are on the table with other “expenses” to be reconsidered and adjusted. Teachers and students and parents are being told that America can no longer afford to support “a bloated, tax-supported system” which Tea Party folks say public schools have become.

Oh, yeah. There are many other government-cutting movements within our economic and social institutions that are bound to affect the employment figures. Demands are being made for cuts in spending for local, state, and national park and recreation facilities. The Tea Party folks who rode the anti-government wave into Washington in the last election are fond of saying to their constituents that environmental protection programs are at least bloated and mainly not needed at all. Our nation has announced that its space program is no longer necessary. Our last space flight launched this weekend. NASA is being dismantled. I haven’t seen the figures on how many people will be out of job as the NASA doors are closed. It’s easy to make a list of programs that are being touted as foolishly wasteful and unnecessary. It’s much harder to get back the enthusiasm for and commitment to the well-being of all Americans.