The Myth of the Fiscally Conservative Blue Dog Democrats

The Club for Growth has done an excellent review of the actual voting record of the Blue Dog Democrats and has found it to be a myth that they are fiscally conservative or responsible.  Among the major findings in their report are these:

• In 1995, when the Blue Dog Coalition was started, the National Taxpayer's Union rated the Blue Dogs aggregate score as 52%, but that score has fallen greatly since then.  By 2007, the year the Democrats took control of the House, the Blue Dog aggregate score was a mere 10%.  In that year, the number of Blue Dogs greatly exceeded the 15-vote majority held by the Democrats, so the Blue Dogs could have stopped much fiscally irresponsible nonsense.  Even in the 2009 Congress, the Blue Dogs outnumbered the 40 seat Democrat majority.
• Blue Dog support for Fannie & Freddie Bailout, 100%
• Blue Dog support for TARP, 63%
• Blue Dog support for 2009 Stimulus Package, 91%
• Blue Dog support for Cash for Clunkers, 85%
• Blue Dog support for 2009 Obama Budget, 74%
• Blue Dog support for Car Company Bailout, 73%
• Blue Dog support for ObamaCare, 54%
• The Blue Dogs voted with Nancy Pelosi 80% of the time in the present 111th Congress.
• PAYGO was the signature Blue Dog commitment.  It promised that new programs would be paid for.  Only entitlement spending is covered, however, while annual discretionary appropriations bills and emergency spending bills are not.
• The PAYGO rule can be waived by a mere majority vote.  Since 2007, the Democrats have waived or ignored it 31 times.  Blue Dogs agreed to this 86% of the time.
• 52 of the current 54 Blue Dogs love earmarks.

The Blue Dogs are simply pretenders or poseurs.  They talk like middle-of-the-roaders when talking to the bulk of their constituents, but they vote like socialists whenever they think the voters are not paying much attention.  Apparently, they have come to believe that the voters are not paying attention most of the time.

Blue Dog Democrats - Do They Exist?

Dick Morris and Eileen McGann give a list of 'moderate' Democrats in the House of Representatives in their book Catastrophe. They are rated for the percentage of time they voted with the very socialist party leaders Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer. They list 30 Blue Dogs in the 2007 Congress and 53 in the 2008 Congress. All of the listed 2007 members were listed again in 2008. Apparently, the Democrat leadership became much more effective in 2008 than they were in 2007 in getting all Democrats to vote with them. Only 3 of the 30 in both Congresses voted less often with the leadership in 2008 than they had in 2007. Another 3 had the same percentage of agreement and the remaining 24 voted more often with the socialist leadership.

If one grades them with A, B, and C grades, in 2007 only one member had a C and it was a 79. But do not get too excited, since in 2008 he had a 91 or an A minus. In 2007, 19 of these so-called Blue Dogs had an A and 9 had a B. In 2008, there were 48 with an A and 5 with B pluses!

I see no reason to differentiate an A follower of Nancy Pelosi as either a moderate or a Blue Dog. It is even questionable whether the 5 earning B pluses are worth distinguishing from the Rabid Dogs. In many cases, these Democrats pretended to be much more conservative or at least much less socialist than they are when they ran for election. It is clear that no such distinction is meaningful. They were all wolves in sheep's hides.