I recall after the 2004 election W was gloating a bit.

I remember a press conference the day after the election.

W had this to say: "Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my style. That's what happened in the - after the 2000 election, I earned some capital. I've earned capital in this election - and I'm going to spend it for what I told the people I'd spend it on, which is - you've heard the agenda: Social Security and tax reform, moving this economy forward, education, fighting and winning the war on terror."

Well, I'm afraid W has spent most or all of his "political capital" and then some.

Please don't misunderstand. I consider myself a conservative. And I was glad to see conservatives running the show in Washington.

But honestly, they aren't acting like conservatives. I don't know what they're acting like, but it's troubling, nonetheless.

Sometimes it seems as if they've forgotten it's a democracy.

During the recent budget bill "negotiations," there was some pretty shady stuff going on.

Take HMO overpayments for example. There were provisions - sensible ones at that - to curb overpayments to HMOs that cover beneficiaries of Medicare.

Health insurers are quite a strong lobbying group, you know, so at their behest, House and Senate conferees stripped that provision from the bill. Well, they actually didn't strip it from the bill, they just watered it down.

The result was a $22 billion hand-out to the health-insurance industry, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

This, of course, was in a budget bill that was supposed to be trimming deficit spending.

And those conferees were all Republicans. They did their work during a session where Democrats and Democrat staffers were excluded.

See, conservative or liberal, that's just wrong.

And this is problematic because it's becoming the rule more than the exception.

That's just not the way its supposed to work.

Normally, bills are introduced by members of one house or the other. After that, they are amended in committee and debated and voted on in the house they originated.

Then they're debated on and voted on in the other house.

After that, if there are differences, there is what's called a conference committee to iron out the differences.

Throughout the whole process, there are both Republicans and Democrats involved. Of course, when the Republicans have the majority, they have more votes. When the Democrats are in the majority, they have the most votes.

But these days, according to congressional observers, there have been instances where bills have been rewritten after conference committees have already voted on them.

And bills are actually being written behind closed doors by Republican leaders with the help of a few of their favorite lobbyists and special interest groups.

Seems to me some of the GOP leaders need to return to civics class. That's not the way things are supposed to work.

Just because you're a majority doesn't give you the right to circumvent the legislative process.

The net effect is that lots of time lawmakers don't even know what's in the bill until after the vote. That means changes in policies that affect millions of Americans become law with little or no public debate.

To be fair, the Democrats did a bit of the same thing during their reign in the majority, but congressional watchers say its far more prevalent among the current majority.

It's hubris.

It's the attitude of "political capital."

And I don't much care for it.

I believe in the conservative legislative philosophy. I believe in smaller more efficient government, and lower taxes.

Problem is, I am not seeing policies like that from the alleged conservatives running the show in Washington. [[In-content Ad]]