The Tea Party is steamed over DC's budget deal. While President Obama, Senate majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) hailed Friday night's eleventh hour accord to avoid a government shutdown as "historic," several Tea Party members did not feel the same way.
Tea Party darling Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) called the $39-billion slashing deal a "disappointment."
Millions of Americans expected $100 billion in cuts and "wanted to make sure their tax dollars stopped flowing to the nation's largest abortion provider, and who wanted us to defund ObamaCare," Bachmann said in a statement.
"Instead, we've been asked to settle for $39 billion in cuts, even as we continue to fund Planned Parenthood and the implementation of ObamaCare.'
Bachmann, who is considering running for President in 2012, voted against a temporary bill to keep the government running while the deal moves through Congress.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky) echoed Bachmann's sentiments.
The stopgap measure does "not set us on a path to fixing the spending and debt problems our country is facing. There is not much of a difference between a $1.5 trillion deficit and a $1.6 trillion deficit-both will lead us to a debt crisis that we may not recover from," said Rand.
The $39 billion in cuts for the rest of the fiscal year was far more than Democrats originally wanted to concede, but not nearly enough to satisfy the appetite for budget-slashing among Tea-Party backed Republicans, who had called for axing $61 billion.
The deal spared Planned Parenthood and environmental regulation riders the GOP had been pushing for.
Reid had repeatedly blamed the Tea Party for the breakdown in budget negotiations, placing Boehner in a sticky situation to make a deal with the Democrats and satisfy those in his own ranks, including Tea Partiers.
The deal is still tentative, and Congress passed a one-week stopgap budget to put the bill in legislative form.
"It doesn't go far enough or fast enough for me, based on what we've seen so far," Tea Party backed-freshman Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.) told Politico. I don't like the number that I'm hearing,"
Steve King (R-Iowa) was one of the 28 Republicans who voted on the budget compromise. He told CBS' "The Early Show" on Saturday that the experience shows the power of the Tea Party.
"There's a tremendous amount of leverage there," he said. "There are 87 freshmen in this Congress. Quite a few of them are here because of the support of the Tea Party,"
"I think they're going to get strong and stronger," he added. "And I know they're looking to the 2012 election now. So, we will see, as days and weeks and months unfold, this is not a one-shot deal. They know it and we know it."
ashahid@nydailynews.com
