Nothing Like Screwing Your Own

You gotta love this story. It's so perfect. Such a touching way to end this holiday season.

The American Spectator is reporting that GOP staffers of Republicans who lost their seats in last November's election are getting stiffed on severance packages.

And can you guess why that is? Think real hard.

The Spectator story gives the grisly details:

During the lame duck session in December, outgoing House majority leader John Boehner went to incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and negotiated what amounted to a severance package for Democrat and GOP committee and personal staff who lost their jobs due to turnover. The package was initially for two months' severance, but limited to leadership staff and some committee staff. That package was eventually expanded, and Boehner and Pelosi thought they had a deal.

But according to House leadership sources, Rep. Roy Blunt and a cohort of fiscal conservative Republicans scuttled the deal. "They claimed that they couldn't very well cave on a payout to staff and then look like hypocrites fighting a minimum wage increase," says the leadership staffer. "The problem is, we've already caved on the minimum wage increase, so this was just grandstanding."

"I can't believe our own people treated us this badly," said a staffer on Ways and Means who is out of a job. "We could have used that two months pay to at least give us a bit of peace of mind over the holidays, but they couldn't even give us that."

Now come on -- isn't that just a perfect way for the GOP to leave office? By fucking over their own people while -- and you gotta admit, the irony is just delicious -- saying that it's because they don't want to seem like hypocrites.

I think the cow's out of the barn on that one, fellas.

I like to say that entrusting the federal government to Republicans is like asking a Luddite to fix your computer, and this is about as good an example as you can find. You get the feeling that some of those screwed-over staffers are, you might say, turning blue even as we speak?

Tom Moran