Who in Lansing supports tea party issues...and who doesn't... ITPP has several websites dedicated to tracking legislators and issues. Our Tea Party Scorecard for Michigan scores every state legislator on bills important to tea party issues. It is part of our Watching Michigan websites that highlight key legislators and key issues in Michigan. There are also sites focused on our favorite US Senator Debbie Stabenow and Congress. The watching sites are all cross linked, so a good place to start is with the Watching Michigan site. Thanks for taking a look - we hope this information helps you in supporting tea party issues, and highlighting those legislators who support those issues, and those who do not.

Latest update of the ITPP Tea Party Scorecard released 4/15/2012…with the votes from 2011 through the first quarter of 2012 now scored, release 3 of the Scorecard is available at WatchingMichigan.  The House is still scoring much better than the Senate – there are two representatives tied at 88%, while the highest scoring senator is at 77%.

In addition to the updated Scorecard, we have added a number of summaries the can be viewed here, as well as newly updated “Watching” sites. All of this is to keep informing you and the general public of how our elected officials are actually voting on issues important to tea party members and conservatives in general. The summaries will be updated by 4/17.

The Scorecard is getting a lot of attention across Michigan, and both from legislators and tea party leaders.

Click on the link below for a pdf file of the one page flyer that can be given to any interested voters.



Obama's Permanent Spending Binge - WSJ 4/22/2011

An excellent analysis that shows the stark numbers behind President Obama's re-election rhetoric. His plan has huge increases in government spending - growing and keeping government much larger than it has ever been. As always, its actions that count, not fancy words. See the complete article here.

Michigan clearly faces a number of challenges, but many can be tied to the loss of private sector jobs over the past decade, coupled with increased costs in a number of publicly funded areas. We at ITPP are focused on those things that will promote private sector job growth in Michigan. We believe that an improved business climate will attract new jobs and private industry to the State, getting people back to work, stemming the population loss and slide in property values, while helping on the income side of the government's ledger. We also believe that reducing the cost of government - cutting spending - and simplifying government regulations will help on the cost side of the ledger while also improving the business climate. Lower costs mean lower taxes. Lower taxes attract private sector jobs.

Our Michigan section provides facts, figures and proposals to address the root causes of our decline, and to promote fundamental changes that will restore a robust economy and grow private sector jobs.  None are easy, and some won't be popular with everyone. But we cannot continue to do what we have been doing and expect things to improve. We have to make some basic changes.

Our initial focus will be on the costs of public employees and the impact of public and private unions on costs and the growth of jobs in the State. These are tough issues, but we strongly believe Michigan needs to honestly assess the issues we face and the alternatives available. 

The health care bill is seriously flawed and must be replaced. The list of issues with the health care bill is deep and wide. Starting with the ugly process used to pass it, with bribes for votes and dishonestly manipulated financial figures, along with thousands of pages of unclear or unspecified regulations, cuts to existing coverage advertised as increased benefits...the list goes on and on. We believe the only reasonable course of action is to repeal this bill - it is too flawed to be fixed - and replace it with a bill that keeps the positive things, uses an honest accounting so we know what we're getting and what it costs, and adds common sense free market solutions that were totally ignored by a liberal majority dedicated to a government solution. We can do better and deserve better.

This will be a tough job, as the political spinners are already working overtime to convince the country that this bill is something that it isn't. To counter the spin, here are some fundamentals that are hard to ignore:

- with Obamacare, costs have gone up for private insurance, not down

- with Obamacare, private insurance is harder to get, with several companies dropping coverage for small businesses

- the administration is already busily handing out exemptions to favored groups and companies

- the cost numbers have clearly been manipulated and are easily shown to be misleading

- you can't cover 30 million new people and reduce costs

We will focus on this and provide facts, figures and proposals in more detail in the In Depth section, but the following quick video provides a highlight of the misleading financial numbers.