by Anna Mulrine

Democratic 'Blue Dogs' Flex Their Muscle: Under Obama, Conservative Democrats Try to Show their Power | iHaveNet.com
© Dana Summers

Under Obama, the conservative Democrats try to show their power on issues like healthcare reform

After another day wrangling over healthcare reform, it was no small amount of frustration that inspired Rep. Henry Waxman to stand in front of a press gathering and not-so-subtly accuse the "blue dog" Democrats of being party turncoats.

"I won't allow them to hand over control of our committee to Republicans," Waxman said, threatening to have the bill bypass the Energy and Commerce Committee he chairs if the blue dogs didn't accept the deal before them.

"I don't see what other alternative we have, because we're not going to let them empower Republicans on the committee," he added, in case his point had been lost on anyone.

That position, however, didn't last long.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has cultivated a generally positive relationship with the blue dogs, said she would not support a move to bypass the committee. Waxman backtracked shortly afterward, striking a more conciliatory tone and offering up a package of concessions to the seven blue dogs on his committee.

The episode was widely heralded as a tidy illustration of the growing clout of the coalition of 52 mostly Southern, mostly fiscally conservative House Democrats.

It also appeared to make an impression on high-profile House Republicans. "Good for them," Minority Leader John Boehner said of the holdout blue dogs. He added that he would now consider shelving the nickname "lap dogs," which he had previously taken to calling them.

But that particular moniker points to criticism within Democratic ranks as well: namely, that the blue dogs don't have the sort of substantial sway that their recent spate of press would suggest. "The blue dogs have really created this brand name," says Burdett Loomis, a professor at the University of Kansas and author of a recent study on the subject, "Blue Dog House Democrats: Lead Dogs or Mythical Beasts?" Despite all of the attention they have garnered, he says, until recently there was little evidence that the coalition really mattered in Congress.

True, Loomis says, they have been a voice for fiscal moderates.

Many come from either rural Southern districts or Northern blue-collar coal-mining towns, for example, "that aren't very hospitable to an extremely liberal member of Congress," he says. Or, some would add, even moderately liberal: Thirty-two of the 52 blue dog Democrats' districts voted for Republican presidential candidate John McCain in the general election. "So the first thing they're doing in many ways is responding to their constituents," says Loomis.

But despite the tough talk, the blue dogs have not voted against the Democratic Party on many issues since the coalition was created after the 1994 Republican revolution ousted many of their ranks.

The blue dogs argue this doesn't mean they lack pull. Theirs is more of an inside game, they say, to get the Democratic leadership to change and modify its agenda.

Under President Obama, however, they have begun to flex their muscle within the party in high-visibility arenas like healthcare reform. Last month, they also succeeded in passing pay-as-you-go legislation, known as PAYGO. The bill institutes across-the-board spending cuts if the cost of new laws isn't matched by increased revenues or cuts elsewhere in the budget. It is a measure for which the blue dogs had been fighting for 15 years, saidRep. Baron Hill, a Democrat from Indiana. The bill also represents "an unprecedented step forward in the blue dogs' fight to restore fiscal responsibility and accountability to the federal government," he added.

But both liberal and conservative bloggers are fond of arguing that the fiscal conservatism of the blue dogs is overrated. They cite defense appropriations as one illustration. Despite a White House victory with the Congressional vote last month to kill the F-22 fighter jet program, the House defense appropriations bill contained no shortage of big weapons systems and planes with hefty price tags. This, critics note, is in direct opposition to Obama's military spending priorities--and comes after Defense Secretary Robert Gates has explicitly stressed that the Pentagon doesn't need the systems.

But the big defense contractors that build them offer jobs in Congressional districts hit hard by the recession. In other areas, fellow lawmakers have noted that the blue dogs have not been immune from the influence of big lobby groups. "They are walking a fine line," says Thomas Mann, an expert on Congress at the Brookings Institution. "They love to talk of fiscal responsibility, but they are the first to fight for higher Medicare reimbursement for providers in their districts and often the first to support higher agricultural subsidies. Their commitment to fiscal responsibility is limited."

A recent report from the Center for Public Integrity found that the Blue Dog Political Action Committee "is on track to shatter all its fundraising records" this year, filling its coffers with $1.1 million in the first six months of 2009. The PAC received about half a million dollars from the healthcare industry. That's up 90 percent from the 2005 to 2006 cycle, CPI notes. Financial services and energy firms also contributed hefty sums in the hope of influencing upcoming votes on banking industry oversight and energy legislation.

PAC contributors are well aware that the upcoming legislation will be tough votes for the blue dogs to sell to their cost-conscious constituents. Some, for example, hail from coal-mining districts that worry about how the cap-and-trade bill's limits on emissions from fossil fuels will affect them. Because they have voted with the party on energy legislation, sometimes under heavy pressure from Democratic leadership, blue dogs have held firm on issues like healthcare reform.

And so, as this week drew to a close and the congressional recess approached, Rep. Mike Ross, a blue dog from Arkansas who has emerged as a leader of the seven holdouts on Waxman's committee, enumerated the concessions that his coalition was able to win, including exempting businesses earning less than $500,000 per year from providing employee health insurance and cutting $100 billion in costs from the plan. He and his colleagues also were successful in delaying a vote. "We were able to reach an agreement that ensures that every member of Congress will have the entire month of August and the first week in September to read the bill and to visit with their constituents about it," Ross said.

Equally important, the healthcare dust-up allowed the blue dogs to tout their conservative credentials. "Look, there's no secret here that Henry Waxman is much more to the left than I am," Ross took pains to point out.

But Mann notes that despite requisite political theater, the blue dogs are aware that they have a vested interest in seeing that healthcare reform ultimately passes after the August recess. They know, he says, "that if they hold out for too much and this goes down, then they go down."

That's because they are the most politically vulnerable of the Democrats. "Simply voting against healthcare reform," Mann adds, "isn't going to insulate them from the downward draft if this thing blows up." The administration "has put so many chits on this one program that if it goes down, [Democrats] really look like we're not fit to govern," says one party operative. "In the end, the blue dogs and the liberals have the same calling here."

But by creating a choke point in the influential House Energy Committee, "we're getting to see how the blue dogs arguably can be influential," says Loomis. This influence will continue as Obama begins outlining some of his efforts to cut the deficit later this year. One congresssional staffer says that the president "will try to give something back politically to the blue dogs after what will be a series of tough votes on energy and healthcare reform for them." It is a nod, many add, to their growing clout as majority members working alongside a Democratic president with a highly ambitious agenda.

 

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