Blue Dogs in Heat
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On a radio interview aired in Nebraska, Sen. Ben Nelson talked
tough. He declared the abortion language in the Senate health
care bill was by itself “reason not to vote for cloture” because
“the long-standing Hyde rule should not be weakened in any
respect.” But even if that issue were resolved, there remained
“other substantive issues.”
Nelson had opposed both the public option and the Medicare
expansion. He said he opposed the cost expanding Medicaid would
impose on the states. He professed to be against any health care
bill that did not lower overall costs. And he claimed he wasn’t
going to be bullied. Asked if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
(D-Nev.) would get his precious bill passed by Christmas, Nelson
quipped, “Are you talking about this Christmas or next
Christmas?”
That was last Thursday. By Saturday, Nelson caved and became the
60th vote to rubberstamp Harry Reid’s health care bill. What had
changed? According to the officially nonpartisan but effectively
Democratic-run Congressional Budget Office, the “compromise”
raised taxes and spending even more than the original
legislation Nelson opposed. It also contains a Nelson-Reid
abortion funding deal
denounced by nearly all major pro-life leaders as a sham.
But Nelson collected his three pieces of silver. Nebraska will
receive a permanent federal subsidy to cover the costs of
increased Medicaid eligibility under the bill while all other
states will have to start picking up the tab for their share in
2017. “That’s what legislation is all about,” Reid explained to
reporters. “It’s compromise.”
It is always thus with Senate Democratic centrists like Nelson
and their more numerous counterparts in the House Blue Dog
Coalition. The Blue Dogs bark loudly, but will heel, roll over,
and play dead at the leadership’s command in exchange for amounts
of federal dollars that resemble doggie treats in the context of
major economy-restructuring legislation.
The Blue Dogs protested the $787 billion unfunded stimulus bill.
Their efforts did little to change the final price tag, which
exceeds $1.2 trillion when interest on the increased debt is
factored in. Then they failed to produce even ten votes against
it (the eleventh Democratic defection came from a liberal who
thought the stimulus package spent too little and cut taxes too
much).
Large numbers of Democrats from districts that voted for George
W. Bush and John McCain balked at the energy tax contained in
their leadership’s cap-and-trade bill. But, abetted by eight
Republican defectors, Democrat leaders nevertheless were able to
produce just enough votes to squeeze cap-and-tax through the
House.
In the Senate, three Democrats from competitive states stood up
to their party by voting against the $446.8 billion omnibus
spending bill. Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), up for reelection in 2010
in a historically Republican state, even urged President Barack
Obama to veto the spending package. But conveniently, such
Democrats do not protest in large enough numbers to affect
legislative outcomes.
The only serious Democratic resistance effort we have seen since
Obama has been president was the rebellion of Catholic
pro-liberals in the House — the kind of Democrats Sen. Bob Casey
of Pennsylvania is supposed to be — that produced the Stupak
amendment.
Whether it is Medicaid money for
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) or Ben Nelson, seldom do
Democratic moderates deliver for conservatives when it counts
most. One has to go all the way back to when the Boll Weevils
provided the crucial votes to pass the Reagan economic program to
find an instance when right-leaning Democrats fully deserved the
opprobrium of the netroots of their day.
Yet as much as they deserve the doghouse, the Blue Dogs have not
been totally useless. They remain the Achilles’ heel of the
Obama-Reid-Pelosi axis and the main reason the Democrats have so
little to show for their supermajorities. Without the public
option, they have reduced the health care bill to an incoherent
mess that will be ruinous if implemented but could still be
repaired or repealed.
Honorable exceptions like Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) aside, the
Republicans haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory during
this debate either. Their strategy of attacking the bill by
amendment may have peeled off fewer Democratic votes for cloture
than it produced campaign ads in which red-state Democrats can
point to isolated votes against middle-class tax increases,
taxpayer funding of abortion, and absurd levels of federal
spending even after paving the way for a bill that contains all
of the above.
Worse, the GOP’s focus on the health care bill’s improbable
Medicare spending cuts prioritized short-term political
advantages — Republicans relish the opportunity to wave the
bloody flag of Medicare cuts as much as Democrats — above the
long-term imperative of controlling entitlement spending. Had the
Democrats been serious about expanding Medicare, it may well have
proved disastrous.
The important thing for conservatives to remember is that few of
the Democratic Blue Dogs are principled. They were simply spooked
by tea party events, town hall protests, and their own 2010 poll
numbers. The Blue Dogs are motivated mainly by their fear of
their constituents, the people the Founding Fathers intended to
be their true masters.
That is why whatever the weather in Washington, these
congressional canines must always feel the heat back home.
