I'm in 253-D in the Centre Block watching the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance debate the budget bill, C-10. Today's session is clause-by-clause review of the budget bill. There are 500-+ clauses to the bill and the lone NDP MP on the 12-person commitee -- Deputy Leader Thomas Mulcair -- got the day off to a rollicking start by insisting on a roll-call vote on each and all of those clauses. That was later modified but the Mulcair has, for the last 90 minutes, Mulcair has largely dominated the debate and has been ridiculing both Liberal and Conservative MPs.

The NDP has voted against the budget at every step, saying that, first of all, it is not an effective cure for Canada's economic ills and second of all, is being used to advance ideological goals of the Conservatives, namely rolling back pay equity rights, short-circuiting environmental assessments, and cutting back on union and social justice rights.

So Mulcair is doing everything he can to goad the Liberals into doing something -- anything! -- to vote for his party's amendments and against the Conservatives.

So, this morning, he has called all the Ontario MPs on this committee -- that includes Liberals John McCallum and John McKay and Conservatives Bob Dechert, Mike Wallace and Darryl Kramp -- "spineless, unprincipled MPs"

Some other scattered comments from Mulcair this morning:

• " We think it's scandalous that the Liberals are supporting the Conservatives by taking away women's rights ..."
• "The Liberal Party of Canada has completely caved."
• He accused the Liberals -- who, last December, were set to join the NDP in a coalition government that would have replaced the governing Conservatives -- of backing the Conservatives once the Conservatives abandoned plans to cut federal funding of political parties, a move that would have disproportinately hurt the Liberals because that party's difficulty raising money. "Now that they've gotten what they want for their own purposes, they're abandoning women, they're abandoning the environment, and they're abandoning social and union rights."
• He ridiculed the use by MPs of funding "shovel-ready" projects. "None of these guys has ever even held a shovel!"
• He accused the Tories of playing a "shell game" with the budget because much of the federal spending will only happen if other levels of government chip in. He said that, for that reason, the budget is "an intellectual fraud."
• Argued that Infrastructure Minister John Baird is such a partisan that he will only direct infrastructure funding to those ridings that elected Conservative MPs.