WHY I'M NOT A TEA PARTY MEMBER

Last Sunday, Doctor Pandelidis, posed a rhetorical question in his [8/7 York Sunday News] column: Why aren't you a Tea Party member? I'd like to respond to the good Doctor's question in terms he will understand. I am not a Tea Party member because I am not a narcissist, I am not delusional and I am not afraid to check my reality and take responsibility for my actions. Plus, I believe in compromise and the notion that every person's voice and opinion has merit.

Pandelidis pointed out that our $14 trillion national debt now equals our national GDP (gross domestic product), that forty percent of this year's federal spending is borrowed money, and that the 2011 federal budget deficit equals 11 percent of our GDP. He's right. Those are the facts. He also asserts that those figures are the result of "destructive government policy." That's his opinion, and one that I also happen to share.

Where Pandelidis and I part company is over the question of which government policies are destructive and which policies promote the general health and welfare of our entire population. Doctor Pandelidis thinks that having social programs is the destructive policy. I think the destructive policy is not paying for them when we as a nation have the ability to do so.

Pandelidis suggests that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment compensation, food stamps and guaranteeing health care and medicine for every citizen are destructive government policies that run afoul of our traditional American economic principles, among which he lists individual freedom and the responsibility to take care of one's self. He calls those economic principles healthy and holds them up as an American ideal. I call them self-centered and narcissistic – and want no part of the notion that I am not my brother's keeper. That's a Tea Party's belief. It's not mine.

The God I worship is not the God of American capitalism, it's the God who instructed us to love and look out for our neighbors.

I'm not delusional either. I don't pretend that cutting government waste will magically make the deficit disappear. I don't pretend that you can fight two wars without paying for them. I don't pretend that the wealthiest one percent in this nation, that controls forty percent of our nation's wealth, are overburdened by taxes and cannot afford to pay more toward reducing the national debt. I don't pretend that our corporate CEO's, many of whom pay less in taxes than their secretaries, deserve the tax loopholes they enjoy. I don't pretend that corporations who earn billions in profits should pay no taxes. I don't pretend that by laying-off tens of thousands of government workers from their jobs, our nation's unemployment epidemic will suddenly be cured, and I don't pretend that sacrifice on the part of all Americans is not a necessity. Those are Tea Party beliefs, not mine.

I'm also not afraid to check my reality and take responsibility for my actions. I owe a great debt to this country. Government grants and guaranteed student loans helped me secure an undergraduate degree and a law degree. When I could not work and had no insurance to cover the medical services I required, the government helped fund that too. Now that I'm productive again, it's my obligation to help shoulder the load for others who find themselves similarly in need.

Doctor Pandelidis, on the other hand, shows great disdain for the very entity that helped educate and continues to feed him. You see, the good Doctor received his medical degree at the Penn State University College of Medicine in Hershey, a state-owned institution that invested more taxpayer dollars in Doctor Pendelidis' medical degree than he paid himself. Oh yes, he paid tuition, but the actual cost of that degree far exceeded the tuition he paid. We taxpayers picked up that tab. Plus, many of the insurance providers that Doctor Pandelidis accepts in his practice are government-funded, so he's eating from the same government trough he routinely vilifies. That's the Tea Party way. It's not mine.

Finally, I believe in the need for compromise in order for a republic such as ours to flourish. I believe that the concerns of every political party are entitled to be considered and reflected in all actions taken by our government. I do not subscribe to the "it's my way or the highway" approach to democratic government. That's the Tea Party way. It's not mine.