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Congressional Budget Increased for GOP Staffers
Taegan Goddard's Political Wire — Huffington Post reports that a 10% increase in the budget for Congressional operations was needed because Senate Republicans wanted to retain previous staff levels despite having lost roughly 20% of their ranks in the 2008 elections.

10% hike in Congressional budget tied to GOP staff?
Daily Kos — ... 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. ...

Reid increased congressional budget to allow GOP to maintain its staff levels.
Think Progress — ... The Huffington Post reports that the congressional operations budget has been increased to $4.4 billion “because Senate Republicans wanted to retain previous staff levels” — despite losing 20 percent of their seats last year and ...

Out of Ideas. No, Really. They Are Just Out of Ideas.
Balloon Juice — ... . You may or may not agree with the ideas, and they were centered around a reform agenda, but at least they were honest to goodness ideas. For good fun, you could go through and count how many the Republicans violated the past eight years. Particularly of note is the third point, which promised to “cut the number of House committees, and cut committee staff by one-third.” Why is that interesting? Well, here is why: ...

The Fine Line Between 'Embarrassment' and 'Sure Thing'
TPM Election Central — ... Breaking through some of the Beltway static, however, you can see that the bill's passage next week is a fairly sure thing. The measure includes money to pay GOP congressional staffers' salaries for this year, as well as home-state earmarks that help sweeten the pot for several GOP senators, including Richard Shelby (AL) -- who ranks No. 2 among the bill's earmark recipients -- Susan Collins (ME) -- who ...