Freshman Michael Grimm, center is already being asked to draft a bill to repeal the debt panel. New tea party target: Debt committee

LAND O’ LAKES, Fla.—The super committee charged with finding more than $1 trillion in savings this year is quickly emerging as the latest reason for tea partiers to hate Washington.

Whether it’s at a town hall at a Catholic church here in western Florida, or outside a Staten Island congressional office, or on conservative activist websites, the 12-person panel created as part of the massive debt ceiling deal is getting battered just days after it became law and before its members are even named.


For tea party activists, the super committee smacks of everything they railed against in the last election cycle: Concentrated power in the hands of a few lawmakers who might be inclined to make closed door deals involving trillions of dollars.

In the New Dorp section of Staten Island in New York City, roughly 15 tea party activists gathered in the rain outside of Rep. Michael Grimm’s district office to hand the republican congressman a letter asking him to draft legislation to repeal the panel. Grimm was still in Washington and the doors to his office were locked.

“The super Congress is antithetical to what America is supposed to be,” said Danny Panzella, a 35-year-old Staten Island tea party leader who organized a Wednesday rally at Grimm’s office in New York. “Small elite group having override powers for the rest of Congress … is anti democracy. It’s anti-American.”

And here in Florida, at a church where freshman Rep. Rich Nugent (R-Fla.) was holding the first of his nine town halls in the next week, there was great trepidation about the panel, ranging from its sweeping power to who might end up on the bipartisan committee.

After Nugent delivered a presentation, one elderly man expressed grave concern about the automatic defense cuts triggered if the joint congressional committee fails to find the $1.2 trillion in savings necessary for the next debt ceiling hike.

“Trust me, I’ve got three sons that are currently serving,” Nugent responded, adding he’s spoken with Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon of California. “Two of them are in Iraq right now. I’m not going to do anything that degrades our ability to protect.”

But that wasn’t all.

Bonnie Dickason, a 47-year-old medical coder for the Veterans Affairs administration and the co-coordinator of the Pasco County chapter of the Tampa 9/12 group, wondered whether the committee is going “to be accountable to us or to Congress?”

“It’s Congress’ job to deal with this,” Dickason said. “There’s enough committees.”

Bill Bunting, a member of the state Republican Party executive board, asked when the public finds out who will be sitting on the committee. Bunting said later that he’s plugged into the gun show circuit and he hopes to work with other gun activists in other states to put pressure on whoever gets named back home.

“If I personally have to go to the states to push them, I’ll go,” he said. “It’s critical.”

The House and Senate headed home earlier this week for a five-week recess after cobbling together and passing the legislation that averted a credit default by lifting the nation’s borrowing capability, while simultaneously cutting roughly $1 trillion in spending.

But as part of that agreement, Congress also agreed to create a joint committee to find roughly $1.5 trillion in additional deficit reduction by Nov. 23. Congressional Democrats and the White House say that revenues — including a reformation of the tax code — could come out of the committee. Republicans say tax increases will not be acceptable to any of their appointed members.

Members must be appointed by leaders of both chambers by Aug. 16 — less than two weeks from now.

If the majority of committee members approve a plan, it will be subject to an up-or-down both chambers. If Congress approves the committee’s work product, it heads to Obama’s desk. But if nothing comes out of the process, steep cuts are enacted as part of a so-called trigger, which will slash defense spending and entitlement programs automatically.

Many in Congress and the administration worry about the committee’s powers and the trigger mechanism.

Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) will introduce legislation to pressure the committee to give advance notice, televise their meetings and ensure the public can attend. And privately, some House Republicans are scared about the makeup of the panel, hopeful that it doesn’t include anyone who would consider a tax hike. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, a budget director under Bill Clinton and former chairman of the House Budget Committee, publicly expressed concern Thursday about the defense cuts that would come if the panel does not reach agreement.

Chris Littleton, the co-founder of a large Ohio tea party umbrella group, said in an interview that lawmakers have set up a process that “leads to a guaranteed closed door negotiation.”

So palpable are the concerns, Nugent returned to his constituents as quickly as possible, forgoing any break after nearly a month of legislating in Washington.

“Had I not come here tonight and let this simmer for two or three weeks and gone on vacation, which I would love to have done, then maybe it might be a different story,” he said in an interview.

The committee isn’t the only concern. Conversations with activists in Staten Island, Florida and others throughout the country bring to the surface broader concerns about the 11th hour compromise that kept the government from defaulting. They think it kicks hard decisions down the road, includes paltry cuts in the first few years and allows increased borrowing at a time of fiscal uncertainty.

Paul Bonnett, a 66-year-old retired telephone worker from Staten Island, knocked on doors to help elect Grimm in 2010. He said it “blows him away” that Grimm would support letting “a small body determine what our rights are.”

Tina Downer, another Staten Island tea party protester, said she feared what the committee could “turn into.”

“If we give them an inch, they’re going to take a mile,” she said, standing under an umbrella on New Dorp Avenue. “If they say that this panel of 12 — the gang of 12 that I like to refer to them as — has this extraordinary power to do something right now, what’s not to say that it in some sort of a terrible emergency that they don’t call upon this panel to make some real tough decisions without the 435 being included.”

In Florida, Nugent offered a “guarantee” that the six Republicans put on that committee won’t “go over to the dark side” and vote to increase taxes.

“Trust me, with the six that are going to be put on there, I don’t think you’re going to have to worry about it,” Nugent said.

“I hope you’re correct,” an elderly man told him as he sat down.

“I hope I am too,” Nugent responded.

Dickason, the local tea party leader in Florida, opposed the deal. She’s frustrated that it delays the hardest pain toward the end of 10 years, while also failing to bind future congresses. She’s frustrated that the final agreement did not get posted online three days before as Republicans had promised they would do for all legislation. She wishes Nugent, her representative in Washington, had not voted for it. But she still plans to support him next year.

“Not everyone is going to make everyone happy all the time,” she said. “We understand that.”

— Jake Sherman reported from New York and James Hohmann from Land O’ Lakes, Fla.