WATERLOO - There were tea bags, tea bags, everywhere.

Tea bag necklaces, tea bags stapled to hats and huge yellow flags that read, "Don't Tread on Me," a slogan first seen during the Revolutionary War.

Even brown river water dumped back into the Cedar River could have passed for tea, as long as no one taste-tested it.

Hundreds of people gathered Wednesday evening in downtown Waterloo to speak out against increased taxes and spending by Democrats. The event, billed a TEA Party - Taxed Enough Already - culminated with a ceremonial "tea" dumping.

Bound together by a shared sense of economic outrage, the partisan crowd cheered on Walt Rogers, a former Senate District 10 Republican candidate, and Bill Dix, a Republican who left his House District 17 seat in 2006 for an unsuccessful run for U.S. House. The pair highlighted the speaker list for the event, organized by Black Hawk County Republicans.

Steve and Elaine Sturtz showed up because they have scraped by the last two years as sales at their Cedar Falls construction business screeched to a halt. Seeing huge corporations cash government bailout checks over the last eight months tapped into anger fueled by a profound sense of unfairness.

"We have a small business, and we didn't get bailed out. It isn't right," Elaine Sturtz said.

Steve Sturtz said President Barack Obama is running the U.S. into the ground with a $787 billion stimulus package and $3 trillion budget. He fears if Obama has his way, he will leave a European socialism-style America in his wake. More recently, he said, Obama has showed a lack of American pride abroad.

"On his trip to Europe, I feel he shamed our country when he bowed down to the Saudis and made friends with French," he said. "We are a Christian nation, no matter what he says. We're founded on Christian principles, and we're angry. He doesn't represent us; he absolutely doesn't."

The crowd's frustration trickles down to the local level. When speaker after speaker railed against a proposal by Iowa Democrats to end a federal deduction of income taxes, the masses cheered.

Critics say the proposal is a disguised tax increase that allows the state to tax people on income they will never see, because the money will pay for federal taxes.

"Anyone who so much as hints the recent effort to reduce federal deductibility is designed to be revenue neutral or even a tax cut, is an insult," Dix said. "I will not stand by idly and watch as these liberals take away our freedom and take away our dreams for the future."

Rogers, who lost by 22 votes to Sen. Jeff Danielson in November, noted the last time he spoke to a crowd this big, he was delivering a victory speech on election night. On Wednesday, he returned to his old campaign theme of speaking out against the state deficit, a hot topic at the legislature this year.

"I'm not one to say, 'I told you so,' but, 'I told you so,'" he said.

Contact Jens Manuel Krogstad at (319) 291-1580 or jens.krogstad@wcfcourier.com.