Last week President Obama threatened to veto a “tax extender” bill the House wanted to pass. It would have done lots of things that might be useful:

The emerging tax legislation would make permanent 10 provisions, including an expanded research and development tax credit, which businesses and the Obama administration have wanted to make permanent for years; a measure allowing small businesses to deduct virtually any investment; the deduction for state and local sales taxes; the American Opportunity Tax Credit for college costs; deductions for employer-provided mass transit; and four different breaks for corporate and charitable giving.

Smaller measures already passed by the Senate Finance Committee, from tax breaks for car-racing tracks to benefits for racehorse owners, would be extended for one year and retroactively renewed for the current tax year.

But it would have left out two of the things Democrats believe in most:

a permanently expanded earned-income credit and a child tax credit for the working poor. Friday night, Republican negotiators announced they would exclude those measures as payback for the president’s executive order on immigration, saying a surge of newly legalized workers would claim the credit, tax aides from both parties said.

There’s no evidence any surge of workers would do any such thing, of course, but that doesn’t matter to Boehner’s Bunch.

But my complaint is that the Democrats didn’t publicly point and laugh at the noted absence of any effort to pay for these giveaways. When the Dems were in charge the Republicans insisted on what was called PayGo, meaning you paid for what you spent out of current funds available. You didn’t simply add to the deficit; you had to find offsetting areas of the budget which could be reduced by the amount you now wanted to spend on this new thing. You can argue that in times of deep financial difficulty you should borrow to finance government activities (like building much-needed infrastructure), but good luck persuading the Tea Party zealots that that’s a good idea.

So why have no Democrats been demanding that PayGo rules be followed now? C’mon, guys, you’re in a bare-knuckle fight with these people; put down the big fluffy boxing gloves.