HuffPo picks up an interesting story. Apparently the Legislative Branch appropriations portion of the omnibus bill beginning consideration today in the House contains a 10% increase in funding levels.

Why?

Reid, asked about the increase at a press conference, initially dodged the question, speaking instead about spending in general.

The unsatisfied reporter repeated the question about a ten percent raise for the congressional budget. "How is that going to help get out of the depression?" she pressed.

Don't blame us, said Reid.

"We had a situation -- you should direct that question to Senator McConnell," he said, referring to the Senate Minority Leader, "because we had trouble organizing this year. He wanted to maintain a lot of their staffing even though they had lost huge numbers. And the only way we could get it done is to do what we did. So you should direct that question to Senator McConnell."

Interesting. Yes, as the HuffPo points out, Senate Republicans "lost roughly 20 percent of their ranks in the 2008 elections," but insisted on maintaining the same level of staffing. I guess that helps with unemployment, anyway. How curious that Senate Republicans concerned about wasteful spending didn't have their hawkish eyes fall on this item somewhere along the way. But such is life.

So it seems the increased staff funding was the sop needed to get the Republicans on board with the organizing resolutions locking in the correct proportional partisan advantages on the committees that we discussed earlier this year. I'm a little sorry to see, though, that they were granted any sort of sop, considering that I think the majority may have had more leverage than first thought to get the ratios they were entitled to and to force some staff reductions to boot.

Still, if the request was made by the minority, they absolutely do have some responsibility to answer for why they think they deserve it in the face of 20% losses.

Well, either that, or they owe us big time for engineering this for them, in the name of collegial relations, and we should expect their serious cooperation on major issues going forward.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Aw, just go ahead and ask McConnell why he thinks they should be allowed to keep their old staffing levels.