Since the Republicans lost control of Congress and the White House, they have conveniently decided it’s time to rein in spending after helping President Bush bequeath the current administration with a more than $1 trillion deficit.

Part of that campaign has been to target the once sacrosanct emergency war funding. Republicans made a fuss last year because the war funding bill contained money for the IMF. Last month, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) said war funding needs to be paid for. Today on ABC’s Top Line, Sen. John Thune (R-ND) indicated that most Republicans are starting to hold this view:

THUNE: Republicans are increasingly, I think, dug in on the issue of making sure that new spending is offset. … Frankly, I think that there is even a growing consensus among Republicans that we need to start budgeting for this, we need to start figuring out how to pay for it. And I think that’s kind of the majority view among Republicans now.

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The Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim has noted the obvious hypocrisy here:

The indecision on the vote from Coburn’s colleagues is a stark contrast from the wars’ early years, when President Bush’s war supplementals flew through GOP-controlled Congresses and any opposition was portrayed as unpatriotic. Cries of “Support The Troops!” met any lawmaker who questioned the direction or the purpose of either the Iraq or Afghanistan war.

Indeed, during the spend-with-no-consequence Bush administration days, Thune praised Congress whenever it passed non-offset emergency war funding. “This critical supplemental funding gives our troops and diplomats the important tools they need to spread freedom abroad and strengthen our security at home,” Thune said in 2005. Thune even cheered an emergency supplemental with unrelated funding for drought assistance in 2007.

On Top Line, Thune seemed to recognize the contradiction and justified the previous GOP support for emergency war funding. “Republicans in the past have viewed Iraq and Afghanistan and the war effort as something that truly is an emergency,” he said, adding, “although it’s hard to say now that we don’t know what these costs are gonna be.”

BP attempted to deny and conceal links of its oil spill to illnesses, after initial reports of oil cleanup workers who were getting sick due to extended exposure to oil and dispersants. Fishermen have complained of “severe headaches, dizziness, nausea and difficulty breathing” after working to clean up the spill, and one said BP did not provide protective equipment. But BP CEO Tony Hayward brushed off illness concerns, suggesting “food poisoning” might have been the culprit. Now, McClatchy reports on a wide disparity in government and BP records on illness complaints:

Although Louisiana state records indicate that at least 74 oil spill workers have complained of becoming sick after exposure to pollutants, BP’s own official recordkeeping notes just two such incidents.

BP reported a wide range of worker injuries in the period from April 22 to June 10 , from the minor — a sprained ankle, a pinched finger and a cat bite — to the more serious — three instances of workers being struck by lightning and one worker who lost part of a finger.

The gap between the state data and BP’s… raises questions about whether the federal government can rely on BP to determine whether conditions remain safe for the more than 27,000 workers now engaged in cleaning up the worst oil spill in the nation’s history.

As other workers have reported flu-like symptoms caused by Toxicant-Induced Loss of Tolerance, which causes patients to “lose tolerance to household products, medication, or even food after being exposed to chemicals like burning oil, toxic fumes, or dispersants from the spill.” In fact, BP accounts for “97 percent of ‘egregious willful’ violations given by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.”

– Charlie Eisenhood

On Monday afternoon, ThinkProgress sat down with newly elected Rep. Charles Djou (R-HI) to discuss his views on policy and the state of the Republican Party. Djou won his seat with the help of national tea party groups, including the Tax Day Tea Party and American Liberty Alliance. Eric Odom, a the national tea party organizer profiled by ThinkProgress in February, and his cohorts even traveled to Hawaii to help get out the vote while running ads through his Liberty First PAC in support of Djou. In the interview with ThinkProgress however, Djou would not call himself a tea party candidate, and momentarily forgot the name of Eric Odom. Although Djou said he would not “turn away” tea party support, he made sure to tell us that the tea party made a very small impact in his race:

TP: Would you consider yourself a tea party candidate?

DJOU: Would I consider myself a tea party candidate? You know, you’d have to ask the tea party that instead of me. You know the tea party, even though it exists in Hawaii, isn’t really that big and really isn’t as big as perhaps in other U.S. states. I guess my description of the tea party is similar that of President Obama’s description in that they have very legitimate concerns, legitimate concerns that I share.

TP: What about Eric Odom? He came to Hawaii to help you be elected to Congress and he’s a national tea party organizer, long time Republican activist. Do you think your victory owes a little bit to his involvement in your race, or not at all?

DJOU: Uh, heh, first of all, you mention the name Eric Odom. I had to pause and think, who is that? You know I’m happy for a lot of support I got from a lot of entities from around this country in my race, but my race ultimately was won by the hard work of volunteers on the ground in Hawaii by Hawaii residents. I mean if you look back in term of the number of volunteers, the amount of money I raised from the tea party, I would be very surprised if it was more than one or two percentage points in terms of both volunteer time as well as financial support. With all that said here, I don’t want to minimize here and say I don’t want tea party support or I’m going to turn it away. I did not, I will not. But I mean, the tea party had as much influence as any other interest group that gave one percent or two percent of volunteer time and financial support to my campaign, and you can probably list three dozen organizations that fit in that mold.

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After his special election in a traditionally progressive state, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) similarly distanced himself from the tea parties. Like Djou, Brown relied on tea party enthusiasm, money, and grassroots activism for his campaign victory. But after being sworn into office, Brown has not spoken at tea party rallies, called himself a tea party candidate, and even declined an invitation at a major Boston tea party rally.

After meeting with President Barack Obama, BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg told the world that BP cares about the “small people,” contrary to popular belief about “greedy companies.” Under the command of the president, BP executives agreed today to establish a $20 billion escrow fund for the damages from its growing Gulf of Mexico disaster, and a $100 million fund for wages lost by oil industry workers idled by the deepwater-drilling moratorium. The president also cautioned the BP executives to “keep in mind” the families in the Gulf devastated by this catastrophe. After the meeting, Svanberg told reporters that he wanted to dispel the myths that “large oil companies are greedy companies or don’t care”:

I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies are greedy companies or don’t care, but that is not the case with BP. We care about the small people.

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Last month, Svanberg had a different depiction of what BP cares about. “The US is a big and important market for BP,” Svanberg told the Financial Times, “and BP is also a big and important company for the US, with its contribution to drilling and oil and gas production.”