CQ TODAY PRINT EDITION
July 28, 2009 – 11:05 p.m.
‘Blue Dogs’ Remain Dissatisfied With Health Bill
By Drew Armstrong and Alex Wayne, CQ Staff
The House will not vote on a health care overhaul this week, but lawmakers haven’t stopped talking about it — especially a group of senior Democratic leaders and holdout “Blue Dog” Democrats who have stalled a markup of the measure in the Energy and Commerce Committee.
“We continue to talk,” Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer , D-Md., said late Tuesday. He offered no details.
House leaders say they have not determined when the House will begin its August recess, which is scheduled to start at the end of this week. “I have not told them that they were going home on Friday,” Hoyer said earlier in the day. “I’ve indicated that we’re not going to do the bill on Friday, because we don’t have time to give notice.”
Hoyer is among the leaders negotiating with seven Blue Dogs on Energy and Commerce who have blocked the markup while demanding changes to the bill (
Until the measure is either approved in committee or pulled without a markup, the House cannot go forward with a floor vote. Chairman Henry A. Waxman , D-Calif., appears determined to stick to regular order, as do other top Democrats.
The Energy and Commerce members in the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of fiscally conservative Democrats, spent more than six hours Tuesday trying to negotiate a compromise with Waxman over a dozen concerns in the current bill.
Mike Ross of Arkansas, the Blue Dogs’ leader on Energy and Commerce, had previously said there were 10 issues, but he amended that number to 12. He did not specify which were proving most troublesome. “Many of these remain unresolved,” he said. “It might be impossible to come to agreement on some of them because of the ideological differences. . . . The legislative process is about give and take.”
He said the goal of the talks, which will continue Wednesday, is “to ensure to the American people that we have squeezed all the savings we can out of a very inefficient system.”
The participants keep saying they have cause for optimism — “We’re making good progress,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., said late Tuesday — but they have shown little proof that they are moving forward.
Waxman has repeatedly said he is “optimistic,” an assessment not entirely shared by all of the Blue Dogs. “There is no consensus. The bottom line of the Blue Dogs has not been met,” Earl Pomeroy , D-N.D., said as he emerged from a morning meeting of the 52-member coalition.
Waxman offered the Blue Dogs a compromise proposal on their issues on July 27. Baron P. Hill , D-Ind., a leader of the Blue Dogs and a member of Energy and Commerce, said he had taken some Blue Dog ideas and watered them down “in a hybrid fashion.”
Waxman said he wouldn’t have considered the compromises unless the markup depended on them. However, he said, they are “far different than their demands.”
“They want a lot of concessions in their direction. And I’m willing to make concessions in their direction, not as far as they have indicated. But I’d like to get a bill out of committee. The only question is whether they are willing to have the committee meet and get a bill out. That’s still, quite frankly, an open question.”
Waxman’s proposal was not accepted, according to Ross, and Blue Dogs came back with a counteroffer Tuesday morning. The two sides were going back and forth over their offers all day. “That’s what the meeting’s been about,” Ross said of Tuesday’s negotiations.
Hill said any agreement on new cost-containment provisions in the bill would have to be certified by the Congressional Budget Office before Blue Dogs would sign on. “Until we get that information, we can’t do it,” Hill said.
Senate Finance Committee Negotiations
The Senate Finance Committee is in a similar situation. It continued its weeks of work with a session in the office of Chairman Max Baucus , D-Mont.
Baucus said Tuesday that a bipartisan group of six senators negotiating the bill had reached agreement on two major issues and was close on a third. He would not elaborate what those issues were or how many others were left. Baucus hopes to hold a markup before the Senate leaves for its recess in August.
Edward Epstein and Alan K. Ota contributed to this story.
Comments
My question is this: At what time during the Bush administration did the blue dogs show themselves to be "Fiscally Conservative"? Sorry, I'm not buying it.
Blue dogs are scum.
Where were the "Bluedogs" during the Bush administration when the republican were running our economy into the ditch. The "Blue Dogs" are hypocrites, who are lobbed every day and excepting large somes money from the Formasutical and insurances companies. The "American people" don't seem to matter to the "Bluedogs....And we are sick of their stalling for money and watering down our medical care options to sute their lobbist. They were NOT elected to hored money for themselves but to SERVE the "American people.....NOT the lobbist. If the 'Bluedogs" don't want to serve the "PEOPLE" they should just GET OUT OF THE WAY!!!!!!!!!
TO THE "BLUEDOGS": Your scam is out: We know about the money that you are being paid by the Insurance and Formasutical companies to stall on the Medical bill. YOU PEOPLE SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELVES.
Who are these Blue Dogs, I want to know their names so I can support and donate to anyone who runs against them.
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=profile-000000000186 Baron Hill is a Republican disguised as a Democrat and is an embarrassment to all Hoosiers. Send money to whoever his opponent might be; better a Republiican than a traitor to the people. Indiana does not have many wealthy people so Hill is against the people.
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