Democratic 'Blue Dogs' Flex Their Muscle

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."