"What's Your Program Boy?"

While I was working for the Department of Corrections I had an administrator frequently reminisce about the days he worked for Mayor Richard Daley in Chicago.  He would frequently tell us that if we wanted to institute change we needed a plan.  "... and Mayor Daley would say to me 'What's your program boy.'", he would say.

I have seen the nauseating countdown to the election for Tea Party Conservatives on Facebook.  What I know is they are giddy with delight at the prospects that the conservative will return to power with their fundamentalists at the head.  What I don't know is "What's the program?"  I've heard the Fox spun tag lines and sound bites but what is really their program.

According to Wikipedia it is:

1. Identify constitutionality of every new law: Require each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does. (82.03%)
2. Reject emissions trading: Stop the "cap and trade" administrative approach used to control carbon dioxide emissions by providing economic incentives for achieving reductions in the emissions of carbon dioxide. (72.20%)
3. Demand a balanced federal budget: Begin the Constitutional amendment process to require a balanced budget with a two-thirds majority needed for any tax modification. (69.69%)
4. Simplify the tax system: Adopt a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the internal revenue code and replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 words – the length of the original Constitution. (64.9%)
5. Audit federal government agencies for constitutionality: Create a Blue Ribbon taskforce that engages in an audit of federal agencies and programs, assessing their Constitutionality, and identifying duplication, waste, ineffectiveness, and agencies and programs better left for the states or local authorities. (63.37%)
6. Limit annual growth in federal spending: Impose a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of the inflation rate plus the percentage of population growth. (56.57%)
7. Repeal the health care legislation passed on March 23, 2010: Defund, repeal and replace the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. (56.39%)
8. Pass an 'All-of-the-Above' Energy Policy: Authorize the exploration of additional energy reserves to reduce American dependence on foreign energy sources and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation. (55.5%)
9. Reduce Earmarks: Place a moratorium on all earmarks until the budget is balanced, and then require a 2/3 majority to pass any earmark. (55.47%)
10. Reduce Taxes: Permanently repeal all recent tax increases, and extend current temporary reductions in income tax, capital gains tax and estate taxes, currently scheduled to end in 2011. (53.38%)

Okay that is simple enough.... But how and at what cost.  Unfortunately the Tea Party members on the whole are less than astute and less than educated on what the net result of this agenda will be or if it is even possible.  What we are seeing is "throw the baby out with the bath water" politics.  The policies they propose will likely grind the economy to a halt.  

I know!  I have heard it ad nausea!  The government is too big and there is nothing that the government can do that the private sector can't do better.  I have yet to see a large road project, a school being built, a prison under construction, or civic center opened that is actually built by the government.  For every government contract there is a capitalist exploiting the tax payer and fleecing the tax base.  Those contractors are employing folks, paying wages that are then again taxed.  The more people who pay into the system the lower the burden on you and I.  

So while the contract points listed above sound nice what is the real cost to implement them. More importantly what is the "Program Boy"?