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Blue Dogs Heel When Lobbyists Whistle
Why their vaunted "fiscal conservatism" targets health reform -- and never Pentagon waste
Nobody could be better positioned than the Democrats who call themselves "Blue Dogs" to sabotage healthcare reform, the primary objective of their president and the signature issue of their party for more than 60 years. Thanks to fawning publicity in the mainstream media that persistently describes them as fiscally conservative and ideologically moderate, the Blue Dogs enjoy an almost unassailable position in the middle of Washington's stunted political spectrum.
Certainly the Blue Dogs are astute players of the game, their power enhanced by their willingness to echo Republican rhetoric while enjoying the perks and prerogatives of Democratic power. But this is a cynical group indeed, whose reputation for fiscal probity is grossly inflated -- and whose loyalty to corporate interests, over and above the priorities of their party and the welfare of their constituents, is a darkening stain.
What supposedly troubles the Blue Dogs these days is the estimated cost of healthcare reform. By their calculations, a trillion dollars over 10 years represents an unsustainable expenditure, even if the program succeeds in providing universal quality coverage. The chairman of the Blue Dog healthcare task force, Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., has repeatedly threatened to kill any reform bill that increases the deficit. "We have to take steps to hold healthcare costs to the rate of inflation, or we will never balance our federal budget again, and health insurance costs will continue to become less and less affordable for the American people," he said last week.
Holding healthcare costs to the rate of inflation is a laudable if unlikely goal for Ross and his fellow Blue Dogs, but the simple fact is that their concern over costs and deficits is highly selective -- and their claim to fiscal conservatism is utterly unearned. That should be instantly obvious to anyone who glances at the Mike Ross House Web site, where all of his puffery about holding down the deficit and saving taxpayer money gives way to his boasting about the pork he brings home to Arkansas. His most recent spate of news releases touts earmarks adding up to $66 million, mostly in the House Energy and Water appropriations bill. (If every member of Congress snatched that amount, the total would far exceed $300 billion, by the way.) That doesn't include the $87 million that Ross claimed for Arkansas to weatherize homes and schools, courtesy of the president's stimulus legislation.
Chances are that the river and port improvement projects forming the bulk of the Ross earmarks are perfectly legitimate -- and that may well be true of most of the earmarks that the other Blue Dogs regularly grab for their home districts. But who knows? When talking to Washington reporters they proclaim their single-minded dedication to fiscal prudence; when talking to the home folks, they brag about their skill at pork barreling. So as sentinels of the public treasury, they have about as little credibility as the Republicans who used to control Congress.
If the Blue Dogs were truly worried about wasteful spending, they might use their influence to curb the outrageous looting of the federal Treasury by defense contractors, which remains by far the largest drain on the public purse. They might have spoken out against the brazen theft of billions of dollars by private contractors in Iraq, whose thievery harmed troops as well as taxpayers. They might have cautioned against squandering hundreds of billions of dollars on programs that don't work and probably never will, from the F-22 jet fighterBallistic Missile Defense System. to the
Yet with precious few exceptions, the Blue Dogs whisper nary a word against military extravagance. If they are like Ross, they mindlessly endorse the expansion of virtually any and all military programs, simply because some of those dollars end up in their districts. At a time when the Pentagon's annual cost overruns approach $300 billion a year -- dwarfing the entire defense budgets of most developed countries -- these "fiscal watchdogs" simply have nothing useful to say on the subject. Their silence is regularly shamed, or should be, by the efforts of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., an actual conservative who at least tries to trim around the fattiest edges of the defense budget.
If the Blue Dogs aren't really worried by wasteful spending, then what do they find so troubling about the prospect of change in healthcare? The unflattering answer, which may be found in a study just released by the Center for Public Integrity, is money. Corporate interests are showering dollars on the Blue Dogs and their political action committees in record amounts. The center's analysis of the latest campaign financial data shows that well over half of the Blue Dog PAC's million-dollars-plus over the past six months came from three industries -- energy, finance and healthcare. Much the same pattern pertains to the individual PACS maintained by Ross and the other Blue Dog leaders. These pooches heel when the lobbyists whistle.
But why would we expect anything else from them?
Let's recall that the founder of the House Blue Dog caucus -- and still a guiding mentor to its members -- is Billy Tauzin, a Democrat from Louisiana who helped start the group in 1994 and then jumped ship to the Republicans a year later. Just months before he retired from Congress in 2005, he pushed through the Medicare prescription drug bill, guaranteeing hundreds of billions in waste and enormous profits for the drug companies.
As soon as he left Congress, Tauzin became the chief lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, where he makes sure the Blue Dogs never get carried away with any of that rhetoric about fiscal prudence or holding down costs -- by writing generous checks.
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18 Comments so far
Show All"The chairman of the Blue Dog healthcare task force, Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., has repeatedly threatened to kill any reform bill that increases the deficit."
Mike Ross and many other Blue Dogs would kill any "reform bill" that increases the deficit. With that said, is it any wonder why Congress chose not to engage in "banking reform" but instead just hand out $$Trillions to them with no oversight?
Apparently, the Blue Dogs don't have any problem increasing the deficit by handing out $$Trillions to Wall Street Banks under the guise of "saving the country from collapse"; and that's while the banks continue to reward their top management in the $Billions. On the other hand, they seem to believe it would be a waste of money to give it to people who are suffering from massive job losses, lack of insurance and foreclosure on their homes.
The parisitic invasion continues.....
The US has the best Congress money can buy.
raydelcamino July 24th, 2009 11:56 am
"The US has the best Congress money can buy."
Yup! As Simon Cameron said: "An honest politician is one who when he's bought stays bought."
The Blue Dogs also have no problem showing how "tough" and "patriotic" they are by joining the Republicans on more war spending.
That's where I see the opportunity to call them on their own game---if they don't want to increase the deficit, they should vote for HR 676, enhanced and expanded medicare for all which will save and estimated $400 billion per YEAR instead of costing trillions of dollars. This is an answered to the prayer--at least to the rhetoric in their prayer.
Jerk offs like Mike Ross are exactly the reason we need publicly financed elections in EVERY political race in this country. The private money is the greatest problem we have here. It keeps anything from changing for the better, and it makes it FAR too easy for this corruption to continue.
I don't CARE what the SCOTUS says, money and speech are NOT the same thing, and corporations are NOT human. Corporations are artificial constructs, built to do nothing but make money. Humans are not only in existence for money making, though that is what this country seems to think. And money creates graft, ideas and speech do not.
Until we get rid of private money in elections, none of this will have a chance to change. And we will have to put up with private money buying congress jerks like Mike Ross and ruining the lives of millions of Americans so they can profit on it, leaving us NO recourse to correct anything. When congress has to whore themselves out for $40,000 a day, there is no way that we can compete against the power of money. Remove the need for the whoring, and we might get an actual gov't for a change.
When SCOTUS makes the link that money = free speech, will that mean if you don't have any money, you will have no right to free speech?
I thought they already made that implicitly so. Just ask the 3rd party candidates.
The term "Blue Dogs" indicates the possibility of extraordinary sadness, sexual frustration and betrayal, rootlessness, etc. This is not an accurate description of a corrupt Blue Dog who is as happy as a clam as long as he/she remains in office and collects his/her daily bribes. And dogs are superior to human beings. So perhaps "Blue Dogs" should renamed "Green Sharks" or something like that.
I had an interesting experience this morning in calling blue dogs to support Congressman Weiner's amendment in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The amendment which may be up for a vote today replaces the tri committee legislation with HR 676, expanded and enhanced medicare for all (single payer). I started the calls saying I was concerned with the cost of healthcare in the country and of the proposed legislation. I told them I found out that the amendment would support a plan which would SAVE about $400 billion a year, create jobs and stimulate the economy (all based on research ) rather than cost trillions. I asked if they were supporting the amendment since this was a chance to show that they would support fiscally responsible legislation, AND it would insure Healthcare for everyone. One congressman's office said that they would look at it and indicated that another "blue dog" was going to vote for it.
The truth is this bill and now amendment (HR676) is totally consistent with blue dog rhetoric about concerns regarding higher costs--another reason that we should be pushing it in addition to guaranteeing healthcare for everyone (as Obama even stated in his last talk) --not more costly insurance. Based the blue dogs and some replubicans claim of wanting fiscal responsibility, this bill could be a much more bi-partisan effort than the current HR 3200 tri committee bill.
Repugs bought the DNC to kill Dems from within.
Short, poignant, accurate, and tragically true.
The DLC "New" Democrats weren't conquered by the Republicans--they voluntarily took up the free-market fundamentalism that now defines both parties.
Joe Conason, a reliable purveyor of corporate-liberal orthodoxy, lays the blame for Congress's health-care betrayals chiefly at the feet of the Blue Dog Democrats. But this view grossly distorts and underestimates the extent of the Democrats' treachery--it is not just the Blue Dogs, but also--and mainly--the so-called LIBERAL Democrats like Waxman, Rangel, and Kennedy who have conspired to shrink and undermine the public option to the point that it's now a shriveled, hamstrung, impotent joke in ALL the major bills floating around the House and the Senate: HR3200, the HELP bill, etc.: in each one the "public option barely registers a pulse.
In the words of Kip Sullivan of PNHP, "The “public option” proposed by the Senate HELP committee, again according to the Congressional Budget Office, is unlikely to insure anyone and would hence leave 33 to 34 million uninsured. The CBO said its estimate of 10 million for the House bill was highly uncertain, which is not surprising given how vaguely the House legislation describes the “public option.”
So why is Donna Smith adopting the MSM-HCAN narrative that it's those wicked Blue Dogs who are gumming up the works by opposing any hint of a public option? Clearly the reality is that this "public option" is a joke that is neither truly public nor an option for most of the tens of milliions who desperately need an alternative, and this farce is the handiwork of the MAINSTREAM YELLOW DOG DEMS, NOT THE BLUE DOGS.
HR3200 and the HELP bill do not merit the support of progressives. They are dead ends that do nothing to advance either of the chief goals of reform: cost control or substantially expanding coverage. Whether the Blue Dogs support these travesties or not is irrelevant--PROGRESSIVES have no business supporting these bills, even with a token, symbolic authorization for state single-payer systems; the states are mostly broke, so this is a nonstarter that simply makes it easier for half-hearted single payer types to swallow this bitter, toxic pill of a bill.
As contemptible as the Blue Dogs are, they are NOT the main villains in this piece: it is the so-called liberal Democrats who have surved up this thin, nauseating gruel of a public option instead of embracing single payer. It is Conason's favored corporate liberals who have put a stake in the heart of meaningful health-care reform--and they have, not surprisingly, lapped up just as much in health-lobby campaign cash as the Blue Dogs.
True progressives--as opposed to Conason and his ilk--should be directing their main ire at these phony liberals, the chief architects of betrayal. The Blue Dogs are simply a side show.
For most of the nation, unfortunately, the choice is always between a blue dog and a red wolverine.
Spay.
Wow, we gave the dems a president, the house, and the senate and they still can't get it done.
The 'sweep' that the Dems made with the last election cycle, and their relative inaction is not the 'last straw' for the american voter; then they should simply kiss any hope for a future away.
The 'lobby' has made it perfectly clear that THEY are the ultimate decision makers in a Plutocratic Oligarchy---and the USA if nothing else will be known in history as the largest.
There never has been a 'democracy' in the USA and there never will be until the Plutocratic Oligarchy is dismantled.
This is what the Dems have proven--- beyond any doubts.
The irony is not lost on this Native Son. Rough estimates vary (since that is all that is available) but depending upon whom is consulted, there were more than 50 but less than 100 million Native Americans in 1776---there are less than 2.2 million on the "rolls" as of the 2000 census. This would make the Nazi holocaust pale in comparison---in fact; no other known to history can compare. These were people who had developed agriculture, and 'true' democracy along with many other wonderful accomplishments.
All to be wiped from the face of the earth, and almost made extinct---in fact many 'tribes' and 'languages' were lost forever---only to be replaced by 'slaves' to a Plutocratic Oligarchy who waste their lives and the lives of the children on the preservation of a system that makes them all the more 'the slaves'.........
America, the world cannot possibly tolerate you much longer, and they will hold you in contempt for generations to come.
Good Luck America, you really need it.