Last week, the Johnstown-based group (which operates over a large swath of the northern Front Range but lists Johnstown south-east of Ft. Collins as its postal address) sent out an email blast littered with exclamation points announcing Paul’s brief visit to Denver. It also pointed caucus goers to the group’s “no rhetoric, all facts” GOP Presidential Voter Guide, a deadpan exercise in candidate demolition that leaves no doubt where the group stands.

The authors of the guide skewered Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum as unreliably conservative in both fiscal matters and in checking government overreach.

The guide’s list of facts on Romney, for example, opens on “Romneycare” and underlines that the Massachusetts healthcare plan steered into law by Romney was the blueprint for tea party-detested “Obamacare.” The list then moves onto Romney’s support for the big government-style anti-free-market TARP bailouts, gun right restrictions and climate change “cap and trade” proposals. The list wraps by calling Romney a “flip flopper” on amnesty for undocumented residents.

By contrast, not a single unqualified negative comment falls into the Ron Paul list. Paul’s record on government spending is described as “stellar.” Even Paul positions typically controversial on the right, such as his anti-interventionist foreign policy and commitment to ending “War on Terror” policies and programs, are described in an unabashed positive light.

The Northern Colorado Tea Party facts on Romney:

• Passed “Romneycare” into Massachusetts law, which eventually became the blueprint for Obamacare
• Supported TARP
• Opposed Obama’s stimulus plan and urged Republicans to vote against it
• Supported Cap & Trade legislation in Massachusetts
• Has also supported his fair share of anti-gun legislation and has refused to return the National Association of Gun Rights survey
• Has a horrible record on taxes, er, should I say fees…although he opposed tax hikes as governor, he imposed a mountain of “fees” to help balance the budget
• Has a mixed record on spending.  He did successfully cut government spending during the first part of his first term, but loosened the purse strings during the later years.  During his time as governor, he did save the state millions by cutting out waste within the system, eliminating meaningless government jobs, and going after local earmarks instead of dipping into the states rainy day fund.
• Supports ethanol subsidies
• Supports “Right to Work” legislation and states
• Mitt is a flip-flopper on amnesty and ultimately supports a plan similar to Newt’s, granting amnesty for “some”.

The Northern Colorado Tea Party facts on Paul:

• Voted against TARP
• Voted against Obamacare
• Voted against Obama’s stimulus
• Voted against auto bailouts and Cash for Clunkers
• Voted against Cap & Trade
• Supports Right to Work legislation
• Has never voted to raise the debt ceiling
• Is an outspoken advocate for the Tenth amendment and states rights
• Is an outspoken advocate for the Constitution and limited government
• Strongly supports auditing the Federal Reserve
• Has an excellent record on gun control, recently being crowned the “Defender of the Second Amendment” by Gun Owners of America.  He is the only candidate remaining to have returned the National Association of Gun Rights survey with a 100% score.
• He has an excellent record on taxes, never voting for a tax increase and always supporting tax cuts across the board.  He has voted to cut taxes by $80 billion in the past 5 years, voicing his opinion that cutting taxes is the only way to stimulate the economy
• He has an excellent record on spending voting against nearly every big spending bill and was 1 of  41 congressman to vote against No Child Left Behind.
• His stellar spending record aside though, he has become a strong supporter of earmarks giving him an undesirable 29% on the Club for Growth’s rePORK card (although earlier in his career he never used earmarks).  He believes that earmarks are held to much higher accountability and that if the federal government is taking funds from his state constituents, it is his responsibility to bring the funds back to them.  He typically votes no on the same bills he is inserting his earmarks in.
• Believes we need to end the billions of dollars we spend annually in foreign aid, especially to the countries we are at war with.
• Supports securing our borders and coastlines, supports enforcing visa rules by tracking and deporting anyone who overstays their visa, opposes amnesty, and supports ending birthright citizenship.
• Believes we should bring our troops home and readdress our approach regarding the War on Terror and military spending along with the waste, fraud and corruption that may go along with it.

It’s hard to say how much influence the Northern Colorado Tea Party leaders will exert on caucus activity today, but the group’s large presence in the state’s fourth congressional district and strong support for CD4 candidate Cory Gardner in 2010 likely played a large role in Gardner’s easy victory over Democratic incumbent Betsy Markey. The group also lead the state-wide tea party support that boosted Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck’s U.S. Senate bid that same year, propelling him to primary victory over establishment candidate Jane Norton.

Messages to the Northern Colorado Tea Party went unanswered this week, so its loose membership in the thousands or even perhaps tens of thousands couldn’t be confirmed. Estimates, however, put state-wide tea party membership in 2010 at something like 220,000. If those numbers have been even moderately sustained, tea partiers will have a significant impact at the GOP caucuses.

There are roughly 1.08 million registered Republicans in Colorado and only roughly 10 percent of those will turn up to caucus tonight. Politically engaged tea partiers will make up a disproportionate number of attendees.

Although tea party support for Paul will certainly thin Romney support, it bodes particularly ill for rival runner-up candidates Santorum and Gingrich.

Santorum at least is likely to do well among the state’s large Colorado Springs-based evangelical voting bloc.

“I ask you to reset this race,” Santorum told voters here this past weekend. “Create an opportunity for someone who can speak to Americans about what America is all about.”

Yesterday in Golden, just miles from the country’s National Center for Atmospheric Research, the former Pennsylvania senator let loose a stemwinder at an energy forum in which he attacked international climate scientists as partners in a conspiracy to willfully create panic that would open up the country to totalitarian-like government control of the economy. He laced his talk with tent-revival-style reference to god’s will and man’s dominion over the natural world.

Yet it may be Gingrich who seems to be hoping most for a miracle in Colorado. He still has minimal campaign presence in the state and has spent almost no time here. His three wives and outrageous Tiffany tab won’t help him win the Focus on the Family-Tim Tebow vote and his term as House Speaker and then as Beltway-influence peddler are sure to undercut his attraction to anti-government tea partiers.

Romney, however, despite tea party and evangelical resistance, may pull off a key victory in the Centennial State. He has gained momentum from a series of recent primary victories and will be boosted here as he was this weekend in Nevada by the Mormon vote. Mormons make up roughly 5 percent of all religious adherents in Colorado, or something like a community of 140,000 believers who generally vote Republican.

Romney enjoyed 60 percent support among Colorado Republicans in 2008, burying John McCain in that year’s caucuses.

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As a result, Perlmutter said in a press release, small community banks will have more liquid capital available to make business loans.

“Small businesses are the economic engine of our economy,” said Perlmutter. “Their innovation and ingenuity will help our country continue to diversify, grow and prosper. Small business owners and small banks are not looking for a bailout or a free deal. They are asking for a fair deal, to be able to compete and work out their difficulties over time. This plan is the responsible way to help small businesses weather the storm, set the foundation to rebuild our communities, and create the jobs we need to work our way back to prosperity.”

“This legislation is desperately needed to help small businesses get financing. Small businesses are the engine that drives economic growth and job creation but without access to capital that just won’t happen,” Coffman said in a prepared statement.

U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton

The TARP Congressional Oversight Panel estimated banks hold approximately $1.4 trillion in commercial real estate debt coming due over the next three years. The current rules require banks to write down all of this debt all at once, which reduces the bank’s available capital and impairs its ability to lend to small businesses.

The authors made a chart worth (more than) 1000 words.

If we are to end the budget crisis, say Ruffing and Horney, we have to reckon with the fact that the deficit is not due to any Obama one-off programs like the stimulus. The deficit and the continuing upward trajectory of the deficit is due to the economic downturn, the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those three factors, the authors write, “explain virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years.”

The report reads like a correction of most of the stump speeches aired on cable news this year:

The government put Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship in September 2008. In October of that year, the Bush Administration and Congress enacted a rescue package to stabilize the financial system by creating the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). Together, TARP and the GSEs accounted for $245 billion (including extra debt-service costs) of fiscal 2009’s record deficit. Their contribution then fades quickly (see Figure 1).

[...]

In February 2009, the new Obama Administration and Congress enacted a major package — the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) — to arrest the economy’s plunge. Mainstream economists overwhelmingly argued that, to combat the recession, the federal government should loosen its purse strings temporarily to spur demand, with a mix of assistance to the unemployed, aid to strapped state and local governments, tax cuts, spending on infrastructure, and other measures. By design, this package added to the deficit. Since then, policymakers have enacted several smaller measures to spur recovery and aid the unemployed. By our reckoning, the combination of ARRA and these other measures account for $1.1 trillion in deficits over the 2009-2019 period (including the associated debt service). Their effects are highly concentrated in 2009 through 2011 and fade thereafter, delivering a boost to the economy during its most vulnerable period.

Some commentators blame recent legislation — the stimulus bill and the financial rescues — for today’s record deficits. Yet those costs pale next to other policies enacted since 2001 that have swollen the deficit. Those other policies may be less conspicuous now, because many were enacted years ago and they have long since been absorbed into CBO’s and other organizations’ budget projections.

Just two policies dating from the Bush Administration — tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — accounted for over $500 billion of the deficit in 2009 and will account for almost $7 trillion in deficits in 2009 through 2019, including the associated debt-service costs. [6] (The prescription drug benefit enacted in 2003 accounts for further substantial increases in deficits and debt, which we are unable to quantify due to data limitations.) These impacts easily dwarf the stimulus and financial rescues. Furthermore, unlike those temporary costs, these inherited policies (especially the tax cuts and the drug benefit) do not fade away as the economy recovers (see Figure 1).

Without the economic downturn and the fiscal policies of the previous Administration, the budget would be roughly in balance over the next decade. That would have put the nation on a much sounder footing to address the demographic challenges and the cost pressures in health care that darken the long-run fiscal outlook.

–
Hat tip to the Brad Blog.

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Without those extraordinary measures, they say, the United States’ GDP would be 6.5 percent lower, the unemployment rate would be 3 percentage points higher, there would be 8.5 million fewer jobs and the economy would be experiencing deflation. Blinder is a professor at Princeton and a former Fed official. Zandi is the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics and a former adviser to U.S. Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign.

The economists also note that the stimulus — the $787 billion American Reinvestment and Recovery Act — had less impact and proved less important than the government’s monetary policy and financial-market stabilization measures, like the Fed buy-up of mortgage-backed securities.

Zandi and Blinder write:

It is understandable that the still-fragile economy and the massive budget deficits have fueled criticism of the government’s response. No one can know for sure what the world would look like today if policymakers had not acted as they did — our estimates are just that, estimates. It is also not difficult to find fault with isolated aspects of the policy response. [...]

While all of these questions deserve careful consideration, it is clear that laissez faire was not an option; policymakers had to act. Not responding would have left both the economy and the government’s fiscal situation in far graver condition. We conclude that [Federal Reserve Chairman] Ben Bernanke was probably right when he said that “We came very close in October [2008] to Depression 2.0.”

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Bennet making his case:

TARP currently allows the Treasurey to keep $700 billion “outstanding” at any one time… The Treasury has already received about $180 billion in repaid funds from banks that are now in a position to repay the taxpayers. But right now Treasury can turn around and lend that money to some other financial institution. It can use our money again and again and again. And since the TARP money is borrowed against our kids and grandkids’ futures, that’s really using their money again and again and again. I can tell you for sure, Mr President, that my daughters don’t want to be stuck footing the bill for keeping the TARP around even one day longer than we have to. By supporting my amendment this body can move forcefully toward ending the TARP and restoring fiscal sanity.

The TARP program has never dispensed (pdf) all of its funds — giving a total of $383 billion to big banks and auto firms, $187 billion of which has been paid back. Leaving the cap at $550 billion allows the administration some wiggle room to aid ailing banks if, for instance, housing double-dips. The government expects to ultimately break even on the program.

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State Rep. Cory Gardner addresses Tea Partiers (Boven)

“I represent a district that is tired of taxes, tired regulations, tired of policies that push oil and gas out of a district where we say energy independence is where we ought to be,” Gardner told the crowd. “I am tired of stimulus packages that bail out Wall Street and take money from our pockets. I am tired of a Government that is fighting Tea Parties and 9/12 groups– people who are getting involved and standing up for our rights and our liberties. And I am tired of a government that puts veterans, second amendment believers and other activists on terrorist watch lists.”

It was a version of the speech Gardner has been sharpening on the stump since the summer and at Tea Party events throughout the Frontrange Fourth District, one that references anti-Obama administration Tea Party themes and story-lines and one that this time conflated the stimulus Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the TARP bank bailout program. It also made no mention of the boom in gas drilling the district will see this year as Houston-based Andarko Petrolium begins to erect new rigs and drill thousands of wells in Weld, Adams, Boulder, Broomfield and Larimer counties.

Gardner, who has drawn heat from Democrats for missing votes in the House this week because he was campaigning in Washington, told the crowd that Colorado Republicans have an excellent opportunity this year to win back key offices. He said Democrats were out of touch with voters.

“If you don’t listen to the people the people are going to fire you and they are going to kick you out of office.”

Also attending were Republican Senators Dave Schultheis, Colorado Springs, Scott Renfroe, Greeley, and Kevin Lundberg, Berthoud, joined Republican Representatives Jim Kerr, Littleton, Larry Liston, Colorado Springs, and Laura Bradford, Grand Junction. Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Tom Wiens also made an appearance.

AFP State Director Jeff Crank talked about the “grassroots advocacy session” held ealier in the day with GOP lawmakers. The session saw Tea Party representatives meeting in the Old Senate Chamber with Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry and Rep. Frank McNulty.

“We had about 70 activists who are representing various groups around Colorado who came together and talked about how do we keep the movement going? How do we stop the health care bill in Washington DC? How do we stop them from raising taxes and continuing to raise taxes here in the state of Colorado?”

“We are organized. We are disparate groups. We have different visions. But we all work together and we are going to continue to do that for the cause of freedom on Colorado,” Crank said.

The Independence Institute’s Jon Caldera said Tea Party and 9/12 groups are forcing Republicans to uphold a fiscally conservative agenda.

“Why are Republicans talking like Republicans? Do you think that it is because of them?” Caldara said,  pointing to the capitol. “No. It’s because of us.”

The grassroots session and the rally underlined again a new dynamic on the right in Colorado this year, one that mirrors changes across the country, where grassroots groups in an election year after steep GOP election losses in 2008 are shaping Republican politics– on the stump and in the legislative chambers.

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Some of those closing accounts said they were planning to put their savings into smaller local banks, which they said weren’t tied to the risky investment schemes that brought Wall Street on its knees to Washington.

But the event wasn’t just about banks or a protest of the financial industry. Sponsored by Change that Works, Coloradans for Financial Reform, and Health Care for America Now, the event was meant to fuel a larger movement demanding the country’s laws work first for citizens instead of major corporate and financial institutions.

“It is time for Congress to take action and stand with Coloradans, ” said Change That Works Colorado State Director Kjersten Forseth. “This system is not working for Main Street. While conditions for working families, small businesses and seniors are worsening, Wall Street, big banks, insurance companies and special interests are cleaning up.”

Serena Woods, Colorado communication director for Change that Works, told the Colorado Independent that it was time to stop supporting Wall Street and to bring about banking reform, reform she said would help stuggling citizens. It is time for Washington to start paying attention to the American people who have called for comprehensive health care reform, for example, she said.

Linking health care to Wall Street and the ecnomic collapse, Woods offered the example of Donovan O’Dell, a small business owner who spoke at the rally, who after years of rising health care insurance costs was forced to drop both his families insurance and the insurance that covered his seven employees.

“We don’t know what exactly the health insurance bill will look like but right now both the Senate and the House bill would provide options for these individuals to find relief,” Woods said. “The problems are too big to ignore.”

“Financial and health care corporations have put millions of dollars into killing federal financial industry reform and health care reform in order to protect their profits and at the expense of the people,” the sponsors of the rally said in a statment. “Colorado families have borne the brunt of their reckless behavior, from home foreclosures to health crisis bankruptcies. It’s time to choose Main Street over Wall Street.”

News outlets are reporting that Wells Fargo last year leveraged coming bailout funds to support its purchase of rival bank Wachovia.

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Overall, lobbying expenses across Washington increased less than 5 percent in 2009 — higher than the rate of inflation, certainly, but nearly half of the average yearly increase in spending seen during the last several years.

The financial sector’s increased commitment to Washington lobbying in 2009 was driven by multi-million dollar budget hikes in the commercial banking, credit union, credit card and venture capital sectors. Meanwhile, securities and investment firms posted a slight decline in their lobbying expenditures, as did private equity companies.

Those companies would undoubtedly insist — in compliance with the Byrd Amendment, which prohibits companies from spending money received from the federal government on lobbying — that there was a strict demarcation between corporate money and federal TARP funds. But when those TARP funds were used to keep the corporation afloat, it’s a paper-thin wall at best.

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“What would have been your remedy, then?” I asked.

He shrugged. “What was our remedy then is still the remedy,” he said. “Cut the spending, cut the taxes.”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry

There was little expansion on the point. As Draper puts it, “Perry didn’t make clear how a little ad hoc belt-tightening on the part of Congress would have allayed a collapse of the financial markets.”

In fact, in Perry’s mind, there really was no need for a “solution” because there was no problem in the first place. The global financial collapse is now joining the ranks of fake Democratic problems that don’t need solving. GOP presidential candidate John McCain certainly didn’t need to suspend his campaign. Pres. Bush didn’t need to act to prop up the banks. Global warming isn’t happening. Health care is just fine the way it is.

Draper again:

At his San Antonio event, I watched Perry mockingly recall “the cries that ‘the sky is falling, the sky is falling — you have to do something, and if you don’t do something, the markets are going to crash and the economic world as we know it is going to vaporize into thin air.’ Most economists might take issue with the governor’s sentiment.

As Dave Weigel writes at the Washington Independent, “Perry’s alternative history of TARP is, no surprise, a huge winner among Republicans. This week’s Washington Post poll found a whopping 86 percent of Republicans opposed to bailouts, retrospectively and today. But back in 2008, “cutting taxes and spending” was seen as a deeply unserious response to the crisis.”

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The Obama team’s regulatory proposal will only mark the beginning of a policy debate that will likely last for months. But make no mistake, serious bank reform is one of the most important steps the government can take to make the economy accountable to ordinary citizens and CEOs alike. Without substantive change in the financial sector, the next meltdown could already be underway.

As Laura Flanders explains in a video from GritTV, there is a difference between how “healthy” a bank appears to the U.S. Treasury and what it actually does for ordinary people. The TARP money was supposed to serve a public purpose by freeing up funds that could be lent out into the economy. But the very banks now going off the public payroll have been retroactively jacking up interest rates on credit cards all year and spending millions to lobby against legislation that would prevent foreclosures. Small surprise, then, that the state of the U.S. housing market is as bad as it has ever been.

“The lesson is pretty clear: you cannot stabilize the mortgage market and undercut the working family at the same time, you just can’t,” Flanders says.

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