Looking Ahead, Obama Builds Ties With 'Blue Dogs'

Among the conservative-leaning House Democrats who make up the Blue Dog Coalition are, from left, John Tanner, Mike Ross and Allen Boyd. (By Sarah L. Voisin -- The Washington Post)
Buy Photo

The Blue Dogs cheered when he made his firmest commitment yet on the Senate floor recently.

"Runaway spending and record deficits are not how families run their budgets, and it can't be how Washington handles people's tax dollars," Obama said in his Oct. 1 speech, delivered shortly before the Senate bailout vote. "It's time to return to the fiscal responsibility we had in the 1990s. We need to go through the budget, get rid of programs that don't work, and make the ones we do need work better and cost less. With less money flowing into the Treasury, some useful programs or policies might need to be delayed in the years ahead."

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (Md.), an ally of the Blue Dogs, is one of several Democratic leaders who urged Obama to forge a relationship with the 13-year-old group, which draws many of its members from south of the Mason-Dixon line. It picked up 11 new members in 2006, and has endorsed a dozen candidates this year.

Hoyer said of the language in Obama's Senate speech: "It was included very specifically to say to them, 'Look, I share your perspective.' . . . The Blue Dogs are a common-sense group of people. They are not handcuffed by some ideological commitment. What they don't want to see is indebtedness for indebtedness's sake."

Boyd, the group's chairman, said Obama acknowledged in a discussion that "he's got a very very difficult task ahead of him, in figuring out how to do all this. Issues like health care, education, we're going to have to figure out how to balance out that. What I think he understands is, you can't do any of that until you get your fiscal house in order. You get your budget back in balance. We're very pleased to hear him saying those things."

Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), a budget expert who endorsed Obama early in his campaign, had pressed the Democratic nominee to court his colleagues. Cooper said the result was likely to be real flexibility in setting a new budget course. "We're going to have an engaged President Obama, and I think we will have a good fiscal steward."

Tanner, a Blue Dog co-founder, said he and Obama commiserated about the "financial vulnerability of the country, and the fact that our dependence on foreign capital has created a vulnerability that has created a national security matter." But he said he is disappointed that Obama did not call for spending cuts and other disciplinary measures during his two debates with McCain.

"You can't dig out of this hole. Now it's a cavern," Tanner said of the country's fiscal state. "He's going to need the Blue Dogs to help with this because we're the guys at the gate going, 'Wait, wait.' "