In 2004 Eric Cantor voted against an amendment to a supplemental disaster relief bill that would require offsetting cuts in other federal discretionary accounts.

Today, he threatens to hold up funding for disaster recovery from Irene, the tornadoes in Joplin and Alabama in pursuit of an obviously new-found ideological purity since it couldn’t be, could it, that there’s another party sitting in the White House.

Give him and the Grand Old Tea Party another inch and we can all earn our way through life with a tin cup in hand.