Since, thankfully, Congress is away for a couple more weeks we have an opportunity to catch our breath and assess the situation we find ourselves under.
One such effort was undertaken last week by Americans for Limited Government as they did the research and compiled a quick primer of the voting records of 90 so-called “Blue Dog” and moderate Democrats. It tends to show the revolving door aspect of Democrats voting against their leadership in just such a number to make some votes nailbiters, but not enough to defeat the proposal.
ALG’s Bill Wilson puts it this way:
Americans for Limited Government today released the voting records of some 90 Blue Dog and what it dubbed “so-called moderate” House Democrats on what ALG President Bill Wilson called “some of the most controversial votes of 2009.”
“So-called Blue Dog ‘conservative’ Democrats in the House have long touted their caucus as being fiscally-responsible, but what emerges from an analysis of their voting records is a pack of lapdogs who have voted largely in lock-step with their more radical counterparts in House leadership,” said Wilson.
“In vote after vote, the Blue Dogs have been all bark and no bite. Although they had the votes to do so, they have not stopped a single piece of budget-busting legislation in a year that saw the largest budget deficit in American history: $1.4 trillion,” Wilson explained.
“By over a 4 to 1 margin, so-called ‘moderates’ in the House have voted with the bankrupt Pelosi agenda of Big Government,” Wilson added.
The analysis shows 856 Yea votes and 207 Nay votes, which Wilson said “was not enough to stop anything.”
The ALG analysis includes votes on the $789 billion “stimulus”, bankruptcy mortgage “cramdowns,” ACORN funding, a $108 billion International Monetary Fund expansion, the Waxman-Markey carbon emission caps, the $2.1 trillion “public option” health system, the $154 billion assistance program for bankrupt states, and the $290 billion debt limit expansion.
According to the Blue Dogs’ website, “In the 111th Congress, the Coalition intends to continue to make a difference in Congress by forging middle-ground, bipartisan answers to the current challenges facing the Country. A top priority will be to refocus Congress on balancing the budget and ridding taxpayers of the burden the debt places on them.”
“By its own measure, the Blue Dog coalition has not succeeded,” Wilson noted. “The House of Representatives this year alone has voted to spend more than $3.6 trillion, to nationalize the health care system, to strangle the nation’s access to energy, and to bankrupt the Treasury—and yet the Blue Dog and so-called ‘moderate’ Democrats have done nothing to stop the profligate financial catastrophe unfolding at the nation’s Capitol,” Wilson said.
Wilson pointed to the record national debt which currently stands at over $12 trillion, as placing an “insurmountable burden on the next generation of Americans.” The total debt is projected to top the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2011 at over $14 trillion. By 2020, it will top $20 trillion.
Wilson said that if entitlement spending is not reined in, it will soon half of the entire budget. According to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), entitlement spending as a percentage of budget outlays will continue to increase over the next decade. In 2019, OMB projects that entitlements spending will stand at $2.482 trillion (45.93 percent of outlays totaling $5.403 trillion).
According to the National Center for Policy Analysis, by 2050 entitlement spending “will consume nearly the entire federal budget.”
“While the nation is going bankrupt, House Blue Dogs and ‘moderate’ Democrats pretend that their support for these terrible pieces of legislation is ‘deficit-neutral.’ They have done nothing to stop the madness, which will only bankrupt the Treasury, destroy the dollar, and saddle American taxpayers without a debt that cannot be paid.”
Obviously I’m most interested in the record of one Frank Kratovil, and while he’s somewhat better than the about 4:1 yea/nay ratio exhibited by these “centrist” Democrats, a Republican would’ve voted for few if any of these budget-busting, big-government items. Aside from voting with his party for the repressive House rules Democrats put in place, Kratovil changed his mind on the stimulus once his price was met, voted for national service (which included a call to make 9-11 a “day of service”) and voted for cap-and-tax before feeling the heat of his constituents and turning into a fiscal hawk late in the game, after the horse had escaped the barn. If you believe today’s Daily Times article on Kratovil by Greg Latshaw, it appears Kratovil will pursue that “independent” fiscal hawk strategy leading up to the 2010 election.
It may be a prudent idea for Kratovil to portray himself as a fiscal conservative, but I’d rather have the real thing in there.
Speaking of Dems and their portrayal…did you see Norm on WBOC Mike? He mentioned tougher penalties for child sex offenders and possibly the death penalty.
Answer this for me: 1. When has Norm (Or Democrats for that matter) been for the death penalty?
2. Why is Norm suddenly a champion against sex offenders? He had his chance in 2006 to pass Jessica’s Law, but instead sent it back to committee to die quietly…and then voted for a much less powerful version in the special session…it makes me sick that he is using her death to score political points.