So this just popped up on Ye Olde Facebooke:
Ahem. This would be the stout conservative Paul Dame who’s been Tweetbragging about his anti-tax votes in the House. And now he’s Facebragging about a vote that would add six million bucks to the budget. (Correction: I’ve been told it would have added three million, not six. I guess that makes Dame only 50% of the hypocrite I thought he was.)
Myself, I’m all for maintaining LIHEAP. It’s one of several budget cuts that will hit Vermont’s poor and working poor the hardest. But Paul Dame has no business bragging about a vote to increase spending.
This is part and parcel of the House Republicans’ two-faced game on the tax and budget bills. They’ve fought hard against tax increases and painted the Democrats as the tax-and-spend party, but they’ve also fought against many of the budget cuts proposed by Gov. Shumlin and House Dems. And, as reported earlier, House GOP leader Don Turner negotiated spending INCREASES in exchange for Republican votes on the big bills.
The Vermont Political Observer. 
Rep. Young said it best in his vote explanation: ““Mr. Speaker: I thought we had a spending problem. I may be a tax and spend liberal but I find this new brand of don’t tax and spend anyway very curious.”
I wonder if the oil company reps there got to Rep. Dame. Without liheap, they would stand to lose a big pot of money.
Reality is overrated. Shumlin won the election, but somehow people believe he lost (even Shumlin). The Dems still have a majority but because the Reps picked up a few seats the feeling is that they lost (even the Dems believe it.) All this caused by a pitiful minority of people who voted. You can do whatever you want but just say you did something different. Don’t worry about the public, most of whom don’t vote, digging very deeply into the weeks to find the truth.