Well-versed in obstructing help to the hungry, House Republicans first blocked, then voted against the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act yesterday, a bill that “would give more needy children the opportunity to eat free lunches at school and make those lunches healthier.” The Senate passed this bill by unanimous consent in August — essentially a 100-0 vote in favor of providing school meals to the nation’s 17 million hungry kids.

But 157 House Republicans had a different message for hungry children: get in line. During the House’s first attempt to pass the bill yesterday, Republicans “used a procedural maneuver” to add an amendment requiring background checks for child care workers. Recognizing it as a poison pill, House Democrats delayed the final vote till today rather than allow an amendment to “kill the bill.” The main champion of this tactic Rep. John Kline (R-MN) decried the Hunger-Free Act as a Democratic ploy to increase government spending. On the House floor yesterday, Kline insisted the bill was massive “deficit spending,” dismissing the bill’s offsets as a “stalling tactic that obscures government expansion”:

KLINE: The people are telling us, stop spending money we don’t have…this bill spends another $4.5 billion on various programs and initiatives and creates or expands 17, 17 separate federal programs…The majority claims this bill is paid for. They want us to believe we can grow government with no cost or consequences, but the American people know that’s just not true. More spending is more spending. Whether or not those dollars are offset elsewhere in the massive federal budget, but one offset is particularly questionable. The truth is that, at least some portion of the billions of new program costs is deficit spending. This money was borrowed from our children and grandchildren in 2009 when it was put in the stimulus. That borrowed money is simply being redirected today. It was borrowed then and its borrowed now. This bill with its so-called pay for is merely a stalling tactic. It obscures government expansion in the short-term so this bill can become law and its spending can become permanent.

Watch it:

An equally indignant Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) called the pay-for “a farce!” “It’s a farce, it’s a lie. And it’s borrowing more from our children and this kind of idiocy just has to stop,” he added.

The only “lie” emanating from the House floor yesterday came directly from Kline and Broun. The bill is indeed paid for, unfortunately with offsets from food stamp benefits included in the Recovery Act. Because of the Congressional pay-as-you-go rules that prohibits deficit spending on non-emergency measures, Democrats reluctantly raided much-needed food stamp funds — again — to pay for the Hunger-Free Act. Kline and Broun’s outrage at such a strategy is curious, considering Republicans have pushed the same exact strategy in the past.

Not only is their “deficit spending” cry hypocritical, it is also a downright lie. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the offsets in the Senate bill will actually generate “total savings that effectively meet or exceed costs” while simultaneously providing meals to hungry children. Essentially, 157 Republicans voted to block the holy grail of legislation. The House did, however, pass the bill today and it will now go to the President for signature.

The GOP’s continuing callous treatment of those in need was not lost on Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH). “If cutting off unemployment insurance for out-of-work Americans wasn’t enough, House Republicans are now blocking critical legislation to help schools feed thousands of hungry children,” he told ThinkProgress. “Childhood nutrition shouldn’t be a partisan issue. But Congressional Republicans – intent on blocking any progress while President Obama is in office – are willing to put hungry children in the partisan crosshairs.”

Yesterday, the House of Representatives failed to pass a (far too short) three-month extension of unemployment benefits. If Congress does not act to extend benefits by the end of the month, 2.5 million Americans will lose their benefits, right in the midst of the holiday season.

At the same time, Congress is intensely debating whether or not to extend the Bush tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans, at a cost of $830 billion over the next decade. Earlier this week, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) called for a permanent extension of the tax cuts for the rich, while deriding extending unemployment benefits as “some new massive spending.”

And in an interview with Minnesota Public Radio, the incoming chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, Rep. John Kline (R-MN), pronounced that extending benefits is not a priority for the incoming Republican Congress because “we can’t fund everything.” “We just don’t have the money,” Kline said:

KLINE: That’ll be a tougher lift in the 112th Congress. We’ve had unemployment benefits be extended for almost two years in some states, a little bit less in Minnesota. When you’re running a one and a half trillion dollar deficit per year, that’ll be part of the discussion as to whether that’s a priority for how we’re going to spend money. I would just reiterate what I said earlier, that the obligation for the Congress is to look at the entire budget and recognize that we’re borrowing over forty cents of every dollar that we spend, and say what are the priorities going to be. We can’t fund everything.

Q: But what do you tell those folks hanging on by a thread who really need those benefits?

KLINE: Well, they, heh, the best thing to do for them is to get the economy back on track and get businesses hiring so that they have a job that they can go to. We simply don’t have the money to keep extending unemployment benefits indefinitely. We just don’t have the money.

Listen here:

Kline also supports extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich. So in his world, $830 billion to finance tax cuts for the wealthy is fine, but $12.5 billion to extend unemployment benefits for three months is too expensive.

Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) is also a part of this crowd, supporting a full extension of the Bush tax cuts, but saying today, “we’re facing a fiscal crisis. If we’re going to choose to extend unemployment, we’ve got to find a way to pay for it.” Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA) added, “we can both provide this help and pay for it by cutting less effective stimulus spending. That’s what we should be debating today.”

In the last forty years, the U.S. has never allowed extended benefits to expire with the unemployment rate above 7.2 percent, far below today’s rate of 9.6 percent. Plus, there are currently five unemployed persons for every job opening in the country. In fact, there are so few job openings, that even if every open position in the country were filled, four out of five unemployed workers would still be out of work. But for Kline and the other House Republicans, extending tax cuts for the rich is much higher on the priority list then ensuring that these households have an adequate safety net.

Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.

Yesterday, Democratic lawmakers proposed new legislation that “would make it easier to shut down mines with poor safety records” and “would also boost penalties for serious violations, grant mine regulators the power to subpoena documents and testimony, and offer greater protection to whistleblowers who report safety problems.” The lawmakers say the legislation “is needed to fix a badly flawed system that came to light after the accident at the Upper Big Branch mine” that killed 29 workers in April. But Republicans like Rep. John Kline (R-MN) are balking at the proposal, claiming that it is too “expansive”:

Instead, said Kline, the senior Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, the Democrats have overreached, proposing “a much more expansive approach” than that needed to protect the nation’s miners.

“Republicans,” Kline said in an e-mail, “believe we need targeted steps to improve mine safety and prevent tragedies like the one that occurred at the Upper Big Branch mine in April of this year. That means improving the mine safety laws on the books and demanding stronger enforcement by the federal agency charged with protecting miners.”

The Democrats’ proposal, Kline added, “takes a much more expansive approach, reshaping workplace safety policies that have nothing to do with protecting miners working underground.”

In particular, Kline is against “adding whistle-blower protections to the Occupational Safety and Health Act that apply to all workplaces.” The reason the legislation wants to address other workplaces is because “mines are not our nation’s only dangerous workplaces,” according to a Democratic summary of the proposal. “All workers deserve to come home safe after work each day.”