Like being in a room with nothing but furniture...angry furniture

Budget analyst Stan Collender is invited to speak to the Tea Party Caucus in Congress. That won't happen again.

I was also surprised by the invitation because I wrote the column to pour cold water on a number of the misstatements that were being made at the time about the debt ceiling. For example, some commentators were saying that not increasing it would lead to an immediate default and government shutdown. Because of that, the idea was rapidly making the rounds at the time that the debt ceiling could be used to force the White House to do things on the budget it didn’t want to do.

In other words, the column was telling the tea party that its apparent plan to use the debt ceiling as a lever with the administration was based on a misreading of how it worked and very likely wouldn’t succeed. Nevertheless, I was invited to attend and decided to go.

The meeting was held in a small room in the Capital building across from the members’ dining room and it was packed by the time it began. I didn’t actually count, but my recollection is that 15-20 members of Congress attended along with staff and other tea party supporters.

The meeting began with Rep. Bachmann introducing me. I then talked for about 25 minutes about the debt ceiling and essentially repeated what I had written in the column.

But I was just the opening act. The other three speakers were the tea party chairs from three states – Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Florida – and each one instructed the House members who were in the room what they expected them to do on budget issues.

Actually, “instructed is not strong enough; what they said to the members is best described as nonnegotiable demands. They insisted that no one vote for that first extension of the CR unless it included a provision defunding healthcare reform (they called it “Obamacare’). They also unequivocally insisted that no one vote to increase the debt ceiling. And, they were absolutely adamant that the spending cuts in the continuing resolution that the House members were so proud of were insignificant and that entitlements had to be tackled immediately.

One of the more interesting exchanges occurred when one of the House members who was there asked the tea party chairs if they really had expected them to have reformed Medicare in the first six weeks of the session. Another was when one of the members complained about having been booed at a national tea party meeting that had just been held.

But the most interesting exchange came when the tea party state chairs openly threatened the reelection of the tea party supporting members of Congress who attended. This was anything but subtle. One of the chairs specifically pointed at the members and told them that the tea party had elected them and would run someone against them in the next election if they didn’t vote as expected. This was beyond a “passionate” exchange: It was angry with a strong take-no-prisoners attitude.

And you thought Speaker Boehner cried a lot before. He'll be reduced to a puddle trying to reconcile a GOP agenda that is being co-opted by the party's most extreme -- and ignorant -- wing.