With all the chest thumping over “runaway spending” and the growing deficit, you would think the party that claims to be the fiscal hawks would look at cutting spending in all areas of the budget. Well that’s not the case. It turns out the Republicans want to add an additional $17 billion to the defense budget over what President Obama had requested.

But that isn’t even that troubling. What really gets me is this:

Legislative language withholds three-quarters of the funds until the Defense and State Department come up with a report to Congress on how the money is being used and what metrics are being used to measure progress by Pakistan in rooting out terrorist and Taliban elements inside its borders.

The requested report would include a discussion of “United States strategic objectives in Pakistan” and a “listing of the terrorist or extremist organizations in Pakistan opposing United States goals in the region and against which the United States encourages Pakistan to take action.”

The administration would be asked to spell out “the gaps in capabilities of Pakistani security units that hampers the ability of the Government of Pakistan to take action against the organizations” and what standards will be used to measure progress by the Pakistan in “combating the organizations listed in clause.”

Does this sound familiar? Well it should. Democrats used to try this same thing when Bush was President. They wanted the details of what the plan was and where the money was going in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While I support this, in both cases, I can’t help but think of how the right balked at the Democrats when they dare question the former President. Republican leaders would take to the airwaves saying how the Democrats were “hurting our troops” and “embolding our enemies”. Right wing media outlets, like Fox News, would go as far as calling the Democrats “terrorist sympathizers”. It was the harshest insults that could ever be thrown at a political party in this country wanting nothing more than accountability.

But that was then. We had a white Republican who played cowboy. Now we have a black Democrat, who plays basketball, so how dare the GOP even begin to trust him. As Howard Dean once said – the GOP is truly the party of old white men.