Back when Republicans were knee-deep in investigating Hillary Clinton’s server misdeeds while she was secretary of state, Democrats were criticizing the GOP’s efforts partly by invoking taxpayer frugality. In January 2016, Rep. Elijah Cummings lamented, “Republicans continue to drag out this political charade closer to the 2016 presidential election, and the American taxpayers continue to pay the price.” And in June 2016, Nancy Pelosi complained, “House Republicans’ Select Committee has now wasted more than two years and $7 million in taxpayer dollars retreading the same facts and conclusions exhaustively detailed in previous congressional reviews.”

Notice that the Democrat concern over taxpayer waste only ever comes up when Armageddon is approaching or the roles are reversed. For example, The Washington Free Beacon reports, “The special counsel investigation run by Robert Mueller has cost taxpayers more in four months than what the investigation into the Benghazi terrorist attack cost in over two years. Mueller and his team spent $6.7 million between May and September, according to a new report released by the Department of Justice. … The House Select Committee on Benghazi cost $6.7 million over the course of more than two years, according to the Washington Post.”

Democrats justify their spendthrift ways by arguing the stakes are bigger. Which is of course ludicrous. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton was intentionally and covertly operating with a private email server to promote her own Clinton Foundation interests. She also oversaw the infamous Uranium One deal with (ahem) the Russians and botched the Benghazi attack response. All of this is just the tip of the iceberg. And Democrats want to complain about the cost? Any rational person would say it’s worth the amount of money it takes to try getting to the bottom of Clinton’s undeniable pay-to-play schemes. By the way, despite matching the cost of the Benghazi probe in significantly less time, Robert Mueller’s team still lacks proof of Russia-Trump collusion. Talk about an *actual * fishing expedition.

More proof of leftists’ faux indignation against taxpayer waste is seen in the deficit debate. Barack Obama once derided George W. Bush as “unpatriotic” for his trillions in deficit contributions, but Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi easily surpassed Bush with a trillion-dollar-plus “stimulus,” welfare expansion and the nationalization of health care, to name a few. But today, amid the Republican tax reform effort, they act like they’re balanced-budget saints. In early November, Pelosi scorned Republicans for “still adding trillions to the deficit.” And on Monday, she bemoaned that the GOP tax bills “increases the deficit by so much more.” She added, “It is very hard to come back from this. They take us further, more deeply into debt.” The debt is bloated, for sure. But so is the Democrats’ political posturing.