Well, that didn’t take long.

First, the new governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper, reached back into the garbage pail and started staffing his cabinet with some of the anti-American, tax-and-spend nightmare characters from the Easley and Perdue administrations.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Now, Cooper is putting the Republican majority in the General Assembly to the test, as he immediately zeroed in on two core causes to push.

One is HB2, as he is determined that men will be allowed access to your daughters in public bathrooms.

Yes, that’s a cause to fight for.

Secondly, he wants to act against state law and expand Medicaid.

Setting up more conflict with the Republican-led legislature, new North Carolina Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper on Wednesday announced plans to expand Medicaid through the federal health care overhaul, even though a state law specially prevents such unilateral action.

Cooper, the attorney general for the past 16 years before narrowly beating GOP Gov. Pat McCrory in November, announced at a New-Year economic forum that he plans to file paperwork with federal regulators by Friday.

Cooper’s action comes in the waning days of the administration of President Barack Obama, who championed the 2010 health care law and wants to protect his legacy, and as President-elect Donald Trump and Republican congressional leaders pledge to repeal it.

As many as 650,000 working people who can’t get private insurance or otherwise make too much to get Medicaid could benefit, generating jobs, helping rural hospitals and boosting the economy, Cooper said. Under the proposal, the state would have to match 5 percent of the cost, which the governor said could come from an assessment on hospitals that stand to benefit.

“We have to accept Medicaid expansion that is being offered to our state,” Cooper told business leaders in Durham.

Pretty sure that won’t drive up medical costs on the working class.

Oh, wait…

In 2013, Governor McCrory and GOP legislators approved the law that prevented an expansion of Medicaid in the state, which was, at the time, laboring under crippling debt and was unable to withstand the added cost on taxpayers required to sustain an expansion.

The law says that the General Assembly must sign off on any proposals for expansion, and in other laws, the General Assembly is responsible for determining who is eligible for Medicaid.

 GOP legislative leaders said Cooper would be violating state law if he went forward. The lawmakers planned to ask Congress and federal Medicaid regulators to reject Cooper’s request.

Cooper “already intends to violate his oath of office with a brazenly illegal attempt to force a massive, budget-busting Obamacare expansion on North Carolina taxpayers,” Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, said in a news release.

But Cooper said after his speech that the 2013 law intrudes upon a governor’s “core executive authority” to accept federal funds and look out for the public’s health.

Again, Cooper is forgetting a provision in the state’s Constitution that gives the bulk of power into the hands of the General Assembly. Then again, he wasn’t really an Attorney General that cared about the law, either.

Berger’s House counterparts also jumped on Cooper’s comments that the state’s share, potentially in the tens of millions of dollars initially, could come from taxpayers or the hospitals — proof that he wants to raise taxes, they said. The state match rises to 10 percent in 2020.

North Carolina Medicaid has been in the black for the past three years. In 2015, state lawmakers and McCrory agreed to rework the system, replacing a fee-for-service structure with one in which insurers receive a fixed monthly amount to care for patients.

Governor Pat McCrory did a lot of good for the state of North Carolina. He left the state in much better shape than the way it was handed over to him. He left a healthy surplus and a fiscally booming state behind, and due to questionable vote counts and feckless Tar Heel voters, Roy Cooper and his liberal cabal are gearing up to tear through that surplus at record speed, dragging the state back to the days of high unemployment and massive federal debt.

Great job, North Carolina voters. Stellar, indeed.

I pray those of us who fought so hard to prevent this can maintain for the next four years, until we get a chance to undo the damage you’ve done.