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April 02, 2009 10:37 PM UTC

Colorado "Blue Dogs" Face Reality

  • 18 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

FRIDAY UPDATE: Rep. John Salazar, as expected from comments in the article cited below, votes in favor of Obama’s budget plan. Freshman Rep. Betsy Markey, on the other hand, as the Fort Collins Coloradoan reports:

“I grappled with this budget but ultimately could not support it,” said Markey, a freshman Democrat from Fort Collins. “I was elected to bring fiscal responsibility back to Washington, and I believe that Congress must be more aggressive in cutting our federal deficit. At a time when families all across the country are tightening their belts, we can do a better job of rooting out inefficiencies and cutting out government waste.”

Markey was among only 20 Democrats to vote against the budget proposal, which passed the House 233-196 and now moves on to the Senate. No Republicans voted for the budget.

Markey and 10 of the other Democrats casting “no” votes are in their first full term in the House after winning seats previously held by Republicans.

The Denver Post’s Michael Riley offers, in our opinion, one of the most balanced examinations of the competing priorities (and threats) facing fiscally conservative Democrats during the present economic crisis we’ve read anywhere.

[Rep. John] Salazar, of Manassa, said this week that he wasn’t pleased with the deficit projections in the new budget but gave no indication he planned to vote against the resolution, which will guide a lengthy budget process unfolding in various committees over the next several months but doesn’t itself have the force of law.

Salazar’s approach is largely consistent with other members of the group. They have made worried noises, but a majority are expected to vote for a plan that – even after some trimming in the House – would run an average deficit of $790 billion a year for the next five years.

Their stance led House Minority Leader John Boehner this week to rechristen the group the “lap dogs.”

Meanwhile, the left is hammering these same conservative Democrats to support not just Obama’s budget, but every spending initiative that comes out of the White House or congressional leadership: and true to a pattern we’ve been watching evolve since before the election, the ‘friendlies’ on the left are as caustic and threatening–not to mention ignorant of who they are disparaging–as any Club for Growth letter writer.

Because for all the agitation for rage and “accountability” and demands we elect nothing but arch-liberal champions to every seat in Congress, Colorado’s “Blue Dog” Democrats are not turning a blind ideological eye to the nation’s problems–and they are supporting, after contemplation their constituents will consider entirely appropriate, the essential components of the Obama agenda. As Riley continues:

“It would be nice if we had been handed an economy in great shape. But the fact is we have been handed one of the worst economies since the Great Depression,” Salazar said this week in his Washington office, where a giant elk head and pictures of the family’s San Luis Valley ranch adorn the walls. “And we can either sit on our laurels and do nothing, or we can do something and hope it works.”

Salazar and the others find themselves at the center of a fierce debate, squeezed between a White House arguing that expensive new initiatives are necessary in order to ward off an even larger fiscal disaster in the coming decades and Republicans countering that this is the worst possible time to burden the economy with massive new government debt.

Unlike national liberal “blogerati” and pundits who only know these people from a list of talking points, we understand the motivations of our moderate Colorado Democrats–and do not fear them. In fact, their healthy skepticism and desire for compromise will make it more likely that Obama’s agenda will not merely pass, but be favorably received by Americans. We don’t expect the Daily Kos purity mobs to ever get that, but Colorado voters will.

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18 thoughts on “Colorado “Blue Dogs” Face Reality”

  2. …of Democrats to [govern] a country.  That applies not just to Blue Dogs, but the progressives as well.  Progressive voices agitating from the “left” serve very valuable purposes:

    –  As a counterweight to the “Uniparty of K Street,” which can be loosely defined as members of both parties in Congress who have been coopted entirely by K Street lobbyists;

    –  As a “keep ’em honest” voice to ensure that Democrats do not succumb to the same corruption-from-power that their predecessors in the Republican Party so easily did;

    –  As an “Overton Window”-type force to drag the goalposts as far to the left as is reasonably possible, thus (hopefully) bringing the policy actions of Congress closer to the historic center, as opposed to the “center-right” that is now viewed as virtually left-wing.  Think how Earth First!  made the Sierra Club, which had been viewed as a gang of radical communist hippies, appear quite moderate by comparison.

    So, I say, “Keep up the pressure!”

  3. The thing is, the best action for Congress, even from the point of view of a way left liberal (ie Boulder resident), is to spend as little as possible and focus on turning the economy around. Because only with a healthy economy is the giant menu of left-wing proposals even possible.

    1. but, “as little as possible” is a relative term.  If traditional economics is even close to correct on this one, the federal government, as the “spender of last resort,” will have to carry the economy for a while.  I do think, though, that the federal government should spend as little as possible to turn the economy around.

      This way left liberal’s favorite candidate for President, Howard Dean, was a budget hawk as Governor of Vermont, having been tutored in governmental economics by his Republican predecessor.

      1. that as much as possible should be spending that creates jobs and is investment. Infrastructure from roads to internet to buildings, where they are needed and will provide a good ROI – that’s what it should be spent on.

  4. They sign up to sponsor EFCA and vote in every warped bill to raid the U.S Treasury.

    More like Salazar knows he could lose his seat to Tipton, Roberts, King, etc… if he stays on the Hope & Change Train too long.

    That party-girl train is about to derail and she’s carrying way to much toxic government waste.  

    1. when you need her, eh??  Ah, that’s right, that well-known Commie symp William F. Buckley told us some time ago, in Rand’s obituary in the National Review:

      “Ayn Rand is dead. So, incidentally, is the philosophy she sought to launch dead; it was in fact stillborn.”  

      1. Sadly, still too many confusing Atlas Shrugged for holy scripture.

        Objectivism my ass.  Rand was a deeply wounded person who went as far from the Communism that destroyed her family to fantasy right wing economics.  

    3. Tippy already ran against Salazar and got creamed. You simply can’t be serious about King.

      Roberts would never get past the loonie right to get the nomination.

      And besides, the 3rd CD likes its incumbents. Just ask Campbell or Scooter.

  5. Thanks for reminding those of us in western Colorado that there’s someone in Congress that represents us (at least in title).  Since Ken moved off the Colorado stage we almost forgot about John.

          1. Did he ever get Stern to give him that EFCA editorial contract.

            Bennet needs cover after the Post called he and Udall out on the EFCA cloture vote.

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