Fiscal Restraint = Unregulated Plundering

Once a ruse is always a ruse.

If Apple adopted the GOP Tea Party-Freedom Caucus model for its business, it would vanish without a trace in ten years. Instead of investing in growth, they’d cut back and hand their competition the win. Instead of charging more for their products by adding value through innovation, they’d let someone else do it and forfeit their revenue. Instead of regulating the App Store to maintain a top-tier user experience, they’d deregulate it, turning it into a chaotic mess overrun by greedy opportunists.

If Apple wouldn’t touch the Tea Party model with a ten-foot pole for its business, why should the U.S. government—a system far larger and more complex—implement their so-called great ideas?

Their model isn’t about fiscal restraint; it’s a ruse for unregulated plundering. It’s a scheme to tax the commoner while granting tax breaks to the elite funders of their movement. It’s not about limited government; it’s about creating a lawless corporate state. A state where a man can be jailed for defaulting on a credit card, while a business peddling those cards through deception gets systemic protection.

Call it modern-day slavery if you must.

Why do the billionaires fund the Tea Party movement? What’s their stake in reducing the government’s expenditures? And why was the Tea Party so venomously opposed to the Affordable Care Act?

The two biggest roadblocks to reducing tax rates for those who funded the Tea Party are:

1. The reconciliation process in the Senate, which requires any legislation affecting America’s revenue to not increase the deficit by more than $1.5 trillion over ten years.

2. Medicare and Social Security benefits, which consume a major portion of America’s annual revenue.

Eliminate Medicare and Social Security, and the government could afford a $1 to $2 trillion tax break for big GOP donors. That’s the difference between billionaires paying 35% in taxes versus 15%. A 20-point deduction on $1 billion is $200 million—a nice chunk of change to buy a new yacht.

So tell me, when did we start calling this fiscal restraint? Because this isn’t restraint. Constantly trying to slash your income while increasing obligations is the definition of fiscal irresponsibility.

The iPhone doesn’t get cheaper every year—it gets more expensive. And people keep buying it because Apple keeps adding value. Sometimes through product innovation, sometimes through ecosystem enhancements. But will Apple jack the price up to $10,000? Of course not. There’s a balance between price and value. Charge too much, you lose customers. Charge too little, you lose profits.

The Tea Party wants America to charge less.

That’s not restraint—that’s blatant self-interest.

The Tea Party movement and its conservative allies have undeniably won the messaging war. The media keeps labeling them as "fiscal conservatives," as though their motives are above reproach, subtly suggesting that government is overspending. In reality, their agenda is about enriching their donors, not fiscal discipline.

Democrats must first win the messaging war if they want any chance of dismantling this “fiscal restraint” nonsense and shifting the focus to America’s ability to create value for everyone.

They need to form a faction within their party that advocates for a one-country, one-tax system. If corporations are treated as humans for campaign donations, they can be treated as humans for taxation too. This faction should push for a uniform tax code: 26% for everyone—rich individuals, poor individuals, new corporations, old corporations—all paying the same rate.

Every day they champion one country, one tax, they will spotlight the staggering inequality baked into the current system. No tax plan will be perfect, and that’s fine. The immediate goal is to move this broken system—currently rigged by vested interests—toward a fairer, more sustainable structure.

But you can’t do that while losing the messaging war. One country, one tax can effectively counter the lies of the so-called fiscal restraint crowd.

Once in power, Democrats must figure out how to make meaningful progress toward this goal—developing a simplified tax structure that, at the very least, aims to treat everyone equally. One country one tax need not be the end all be all, but it will create a safe, winnable path to simplfy the tax code. Every two years, you keep chipping away at the difference. Every year, you remind people that the goal is ambitious, but here is our progress.

As long as you show people that you are working towards something and also win the messaging war, you will be given the license to fix things.