Posted on 07/20/2009 8:14:03 PM PDT by kcvl
The conservative Blue Dog Democrats were top dog in the House's negotiations of health care legislation Monday, but past revolts by this pivotal voting bloc usually ended with members bowing to the party's liberal leadership.
The Blue Dogs, who hold enough seats on the Energy and Commerce Committee to kill the bill this week, spent the day in closed-door negotiations with Democratic leaders and pressed demands for more cost controls and greater protections for small businesses and rural areas.
"I would term them as productive meetings, but we still have a long way to go," said Rep. Mike Ross, Arkansas Democrat and chairman of the Blue Dogs' health care task force.
He said the group was playing a constructive role in shaping the legislation and this time would not cave in to pressure from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat.
"I've never seen the group so unified," he said, adding that the group is "joined at the hip." But he wouldn't say whether the Blue Dogs are prepared to kill the bill - and hand President Obama a significant defeat.
The coalition has a record of threatening action but voting with the Democratic leadership after receiving, at best, modest concessions.
In eight key votes to raise taxes since 1993, most of the Blue Dogs ultimately sided with their party to support the measures, according to an analysis by the Club for Growth, a conservative group advocating low taxes and limited government.
In May 2008, all but four of the roughly 50 Blue Dogs voted for a spending bill that permanently expanded education benefits for members of the armed forces serving since Sept. 11, 2001, paying for the entitlement with a 0.47 percent surtax on individual incomes of more than $500,000 a year.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
They’ll cave and give the Kenyan his “victory”.
Will this actually go through?
AND, just wait until they find out that MEDICARE WILL BE CUT! There will be a REVOLT!
Bad, Bad blue doggies! Off to the Pelosi school for dog obedience training! They shall obey their masters or no treats!
Obama is taking the Blue Dogs to the woodshed tomorrow! Who knows what will happen when he starts threatening people!
U. S. House of Representatives
Toll free capital switchboard numbers are:
800-965-4701
800-828-0498
Congress critter ping!
Let them know you do not appreciate being forced into second tier health care that isn't good enough for them.
Ask them how they are going to cut 530 billion in Medicare expenses at the time Baby Boomers are entering the system.
Let them know you do not understand why Kennedy is getting so much end of life care, while the bill bearing his name will ration end of life care for your mother.
Call their local offices. Call their Washington offices. Don't count of the Blue Dogs. They are wusses.
Welcome to the dictatorship that was the USA. The American people do not want this DeathCare. I don’t care what they do to it, we don’t want any of it!! It’s like pouring perfume on feces.
Anyone that signs on to this DeathCare has to be voted out and they must be told that now.
He’ll probably advise them the way he did the automaker CEO’s-He’s the only thing standing between them and the torches and pitchforks.
This makes me very nervous. I was hoping the Blue dogs would side with common sense and stop this disastrous bill. God help us stop this EVIL COMMUNIST SOB and his demon hordes before it’s too late!!
It was too late the day he got elected. We live in a country whose population has lost the ability to discern, literally, between good and evil.
We should probably check their offshore accounts. I am certain that major money changed hands today.
Yes and you better get ready to die. Every five years you talk to someone, not necessarily a physician, could be someone from the government, about how you want forego any treatment and just die. Obama is death to America, literally.
It’s treason to want this and they are committing it.
B U M P
That's what I expect will happen
In typical astroturfing style, Emanuel will twist arms sufficiently to have them sign on, giving them cover by claiming they force concessions to ‘fix the mistakes’ in the bill. We the poeple are no longer in charge anyway, so the democrat party does as they damn well please, and they are destroying the economy in order to make the people depend upon the government, which of course democrats run. [See Alinsky assertion that sometimes you have to destroy a nations economy in order to cause the people to depend upon the government + the Cloward-Piven strategy]
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