In the war on Democrats this year, Republicans united behind the pitch for a universal “spending freeze” and “across the board” budget cuts in their promise to reign in the deficit. Falling in line, Republican Rep. Phil Gingrey (GA) assured Americans that he is “committed to finding ways to reduce” government programs that are “bloated” and “riddled with waste.” “With each new appropriations bill Congress considers, I have to ask myself, ‘Is this a good way to spend tax payer dollars,’” he says.

Given his rhetoric, it would be reasonable to assume that Gingrey also opposes unnecessary defense spending. The F-22 stealth fighter jet, for example, is a weapon designed to address threats last faced during the Cold War. It “has not performed a single mission” in Iraq or Afghanistan, and comes with a $120 million price tag per plane. Coupled with the $8 billion it would cost the Pentagon to upgrade the 100 F-22s already in use, the F-22 landed on Defense Secretary Gates’s chopping block last year. After consulting with other Defense officials, Gates concluded, “there is no military requirement” for creating more F-22s.

Yet despite that, and the overwhelming bipartisan agreement that the plane qualifies as taxpayer waste, and in spite of own his commitment to cutting spending, Gingrey now thinks he knows better than the Pentagon and is calling for resuming production of more F-22s. Not only is Gingrey willing to waste taxpayer dollars on an unnecessary and unwanted weapon, he’s willing to fight his own party to do it, because the planes are built in his state:

“The takeover of the U.S. House by Republicans could prompt a revival of the fight for additional funding for the Marietta-built F-22 stealth fighter, U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey said Friday. This isn’t just for the sake of home-cooking, but also for the sake of the country,” Gingrey said in a telephone interview.

But Gingrey conceded that concerns over spending and the federal deficit could make the funding battle a difficult one. The planes have a price tag of $120 million each. “We would have to look at it with a very, very sharp pencil,” he said. “It would take some negotiating.”[...]

Gringrey says he has not consulted yet with Chambliss on the issue of reviving the F-22. Right now, Gingrey said, he and the rest of the Georgia delegation were focusing their efforts on getting Republican Austin Scott of Tifton, who beat Democrat Jim Marshall of Macon, a seat on the House Armed Services Committee.

Scott, as the only Georgia Republican on the committee, would become the point man for any discussion of the F-22, Gingrey said.

Gingrey’s soft-spot for this boondoggle may have to do with the fact that he owns tens of thousands of dollars worth of stock in Boeing — Lockheed Martin’s partner in building the F-22. And if he hopes to slip funding for the fighter into this year’s defense authorization bill, he’s making a shrewd move in recruiting Scott for the House Armed Services Committee. Scott represents Georgia’s 8th District, which “has a strong military presence and includes the Warner Robins Air Logistics Center, a testing and repair site for the F-22 Raptor.”

But Gingrey is not alone in falling out of step with the GOP’s posturing on spending cuts. Along with the current battle over earmarks, there is an internal “civil war” between “hard-core deficit hawks” like Senators-elect Pat Toomey (R-PA), Rand Paul (R-KY), Mark Kirk (R-IL), and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) who want to cut military spending, and members like Gingrey and Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA) “who view military spending as sacrosanct.” Even GOP leadership seems to be sacrificing the principle for pet projects. Both presumptive-House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and former GOP House Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-IN) are also ignoring Gates’s advice to cut the “costly and unnecessary” extra engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter in the name of “parochial interests.”

On Tuesday evening, Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) conducted an “America Speaking Out” town hall with his constituents. Gingrey explained that Republicans would solicit ideas from the public using their America Speaking Out online platform to generate a new version of the 1994 “Contract with America.” However, he said regardless of the input received, the new political document outlining the GOP agenda would focus on extending the Bush era tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans. To reinforce his point, Gingrey said that extending the Bush era tax cuts “at any level” would be a promise so strong it would be akin to “God’s covenant with Moses,” and a “a pledge of your sworn sacred honor.” He also said that he would “sign it in blood if necessary”:

GINGREY: I had somebody say you know a Contract with America is a little redundant, going back to 1994. And I had somebody suggest at a town hall meeting recently maybe it ought to be a “Covenant with America.” Just as God’s covenant with Moses, really this is a convenant. This is more of a commitment, more than a contract. This is a pledge of your sworn sacred honor. And maybe that’s the kind of thing that we need to get, to truly get attention and sign it in blood if necessary. So we think it would be not be appropriate at a time like this to raise people’s taxes, at any level. At any level. [….]

GINGREY: When you start taxing men and women who create most of the jobs, you know that’s not the answer. So, our opinion I’m sure will be part of this covenant with America will be to keep taxes low for everybody.

Watch it:

Despite Gingrey’s colorful language, all President Obama is seeking to do is to keep tax cuts affecting the middle class, while allowing the tax cuts for some of America’s richest individuals to expire, returning to Clinton-era rates. Oddly, Gingrey also attacked public sector jobs and government spending, while in the same breath empathizing with “the pain that our teachers in Georgia are feeling.”

Yesterday, DNC Chairman Tim Kaine announced the Democratic Party’s new effort to link the GOP and the Tea Party movement as “one and the same.” Today on C-Span, Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) disputed Kaine’s characterization. “What Gov. Kaine just said is absolutely untrue,” Gingrey contested. But earlier in the segment, Gingrey conceded the “intent” of the new House Tea Party caucus is “to make sure” that the relationship between the Tea Party and the GOP “was solidified.” Later, when host Susan Swain asked if their Tea Party caucus is going to be a “big tent” group, Gingrey seemingly misunderstood the question, and answered in terms of the GOP as a whole:

SWAIN: Will you as members of Congress adopt a statement specifically suggesting that you want to be a big tent organization?

GINGREY: We are a big tent organization if you are referring to my party, the Republican Party, I don’t think we’ll ever be as big a tent organization as the Democratic Party, their DNA is just a little bit different from ours quite frankly.

Watch it:

Perhaps the reason the GOP will never be as inclusive as its rival Party is because many of its members want it that way. Last year, former GOP Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee stated definitively that a “big tent” will “kill the conservative movement.” “Conservatives are conservatives because they have convictions and convictions aren’t preferences,” he said.

Earlier this year, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) — commonly referred to as the stimulus — without a single Republican vote in the House of Representatives. Since then, a whole host of legislators who opposed the stimulus have jumped on the chance to personally deliver stimulus funds to their cash-strapped districts.

The latest member of Congress to engage in this hypocrisy is Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA). Earlier this month, Gingrey appeared in the city of Cedartown, Georgia, to present a giant check of $625,000 in stimulus funds to the city commission to help fund the the city’s Streetscape project, which will install new sidewalks and infrastructure:

The money comes from federal stimulus funds and will fund the second phase of Cedartown’s Streetscape project, with new sidewalks, landscaping and other improvements to the downtown area. [...]

Believing that the project qualified for federal stimulus funds as a “shovel-ready” project, Gingrey presented the proposal at the federal level, his spokesperson, Linda Liles, explained. [..]

“These federal dollars will allow us to work both phases together and complete Streetscape by mid-2010,” [City Commissioner Scott] Tillery said. “This will be a big boost for the historic downtown area and for the whole city.

The Cedartown Standard snapped a picture of the congressman presenting stimulus funds which he once decried as the “trillion dollar debt” bill:

Gingrey joins numerous other conservatives in opposing the stimulus while touting its benefits and exploiting its funds. For example, following their votes against the stimulus, Sens. Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates to steer $50 million in stimulus funding into a bio-energy project they supported. Rep. Joseph Cao (R-LA) boasted about securing funds for streetcar expansions that came from ARRA funds. And perhaps the biggest hypocrite of all, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA), toured his state handing out jumbo-sized checks that were funded by the stimulus, despite his pledge that if he was still a member of Congress, he would’ve voted against the Recovery Act.

On MSNBC today, Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) argued that if President Obama wanted to find a “bipartisan” health care solution, he should vow to veto any reform legislation that contains a public option or a co-op. “Let’s don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” said Gingrey. “Let’s remove the public option, and also anything that smacks of a public option, like a co-op. And indeed, I will veto that if it comes to my desk with that in there.” Watch it:

Gingrey claimed that the American people “are rejecting the public option,” but this isn’t supported by public opinion. Last month, SurveyUSA found that 77 percent of Americans support a “choice” between a government-run health care insurance option and private coverage. Gingrey also says that a bill without a public option would be “a good bill that we can all agree on,” but a significant amount of Democrats will not agree to a bill without a public option.