This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, May 30th, 2012. I'm Caleb Brown.

The Tea Party Movement's focus is on limited government, unapologetic U.S. sovereignty, in the text and plain meaning

of the U.S. Constitution.

So says Elizabeth Price Foley, author of the new book, The Tea Party, Three Principles.

We spoke following a forum for the book held this month.

John Samples here at the Cato Institute makes a point,

and he made this pretty early on

in the following the birth of the Tea Party movement and that is that

Some tea partiers like big government and that is not an insignificant group of people.

I think the argument that you're making is that to the extent

T-partiers are engaged with the text and meaning of the US Constitution, they're going to have to make a choice.

Yeah, and it's not even necessarily that.

It's just that if you are engaged in the text and the meaning of the Constitution, you know that there is in fact textually a

plenary power to tax and then by implication to spend for the general welfare.

That's what it says. And so there is no

textual limitation on the exercise of that taxing power. In fact, if you if you go

into the original materials, the founders were pretty clear that they

thought the limitation on the taxing power was a political one.

That good politics or political dynamics, accountability to the people would be what would limit the federal government and Congress from sort of going hog wild and engaging in, you know, a too high levels of taxation. So if you look at programs for

example like Medicare or Social Security which T-partiers do in fact support

and you say well isn't that hypocritical that they support those programs and yet they don't support the Affordable Care Act?

It's not hypocritical at all because Medicare and Social Security are legitimate exercises of the taxing power. And as a constitutional matter they're perfectly okay.

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