The New GOP Looks a Lot Like the Old GOP

Here's how well Republicans learned from their past.

• Alabama Senator Dick Shelby keeps pumping half a billion dollars of tax payer money into his home district to fund a rocket NASA no longer wants. It just so happens, too, the maker of the rocket is Sen. Shelby's top campaign donor. Coincidence I'm sure.
• There will be 289 Republicans in the next Congress.  Less than 2% of them (5 actually) have chosen to forgo their government-run health plans.

• Tea bagger Governor-elect in Maine, who ran his campaign against what he called corrupt government and cronyism, hired his 22 year old daughter for an upper level staff position worth $41,000 a year.  She has no experience and her degree is not in government.  But he's a tea bagger favorite so this does not count has nepotism or an abuse of tax dollars.

• New rules for the upcoming Republican House session eliminate PayGo, the measure that forces new spending to be paid for.  It was used in the 90s and removed once George W. Bush took over.  When Democrats regained Congressional power in 2007 they reinstated PayGo.  But Republicans are now replacing it with CutGo, which makes it easier for them to pass legislation that increases the deficit such as they did in 2003 with their huge expansion to Medicare or in 2001 with their tax cuts.  Now remember, these are the small government, fiscal conservatives doing this.

• In claiming to stick with their campaign platforms of cutting spending and shrinking government, Republican leaders have pledged to cut trim a whopping $100 billion from the budget.  Yes, $100 billion of $3 trillion is chump change.  But they have pledged not to make cuts in defense spending and will only cut the money from non-security discretionary spending.  Well, that means Republicans plan to cut $100 billion from either education, health care, housing, urban development or any other social program they don't like that day.  Why didn't they run their campaigns by saying they were going to cut $100 billion from education??

• More GOP reps are hiring more and more lobbyists at alarming rates...faster than ever before to be exact.  Once again, an action that flies in the face of their campaign rhetoric.

Seems they learned their lessons well.