Hoffa: Tea Party Protesters Pick Wrong Target

Published by Detroit News Mar. 10, 2010

By International Brotherhood of Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa

When I listen to the Tea Party tax protesters, I hear that they’re mad as hell. They’re angry about deficit spending, and they believe that government is undermining free enterprise for the benefit of international elites.

But where were they just 18 months ago? These trends were all developing during the Bush years. What suddenly sent the Tea Party protesters to town hall meetings last summer and to Washington in the fall?

I believe it was our worsening economy. And I place part of the blame for our economic problems on conglomerates, especially banks, that are too big and doing too little to provide credit and capital to businesses to create good jobs in America.

Tea Party protesters are average Americans who are paying the price for the unrestrained power of corporations. They pay three-quarters of their income for fixed expenses. Those higher costs include taxes – the cause of much Tea Party anger – but they also include mortgage, health insurance and transportation.

Compare that with their parents’ experience. Fixed expenses only consumed half of their parents’ income in the ‘70s – and it’s likely only one of their parents worked.

Protesters blame “big government” for their woes, but their anger is misdirected. It’s the big conglomerates that are fleecing them. The fact is that institutional power has moved away from government to Wall Street and large corporations.

Take the banks, for example. They’ve weakened government limits on their size to the point where five of them control nearly half of all bank assets in the United States today. It’s the banks, not government, that are gouging consumers with credit cards that carry exorbitant rates, checking accounts with hidden fees and mortgages so complicated that they require an advanced degree to understand.

And when the banks that were too big to fail came close to failing, it wasn’t the consumers who got relief. Banks got their bailout to continue lending money to businesses to create jobs. But bank lending actually decreased 7.5 percent last year.

The health insurance companies aren’t much different. They’ve taken advantage of their exemption from anti-trust laws, and hundreds of them have merged over the past 15 years. Now, one or two of them control 80 percent of the market in many parts of the country. Anthem has so much monopoly power that it’s raising rates 39 percent in California.

Insurance premiums aren’t soaring because of “big government.” They’re rising because insurance companies have too much market power – and the government hasn’t been able to control them.

Tea Party protesters unhappy with the bailouts of GM and Chrysler can also blame policies that allowed companies to become too big to fail. Automakers rely on just three companies for most of the iron ore that goes into the steel they use. They depend on the same suppliers for their parts. So a shutdown of GM and Chrysler would have threatened suppliers for Toyota, Nissan, Honda and Ford – and possibly the automakers themselves.

Some of the Tea Party protests are quietly funded by right-wing groups that in turn are financed by large energy and banking conglomerates. These corporate giants have no loyalty to America and no sense of public purpose. The Tea Party protesters are being manipulated by the very same conglomerates that are causing their problems.

To read archived articles from General President Hoffa, click here.