Is there any relationship between the Recalcitrant Blue Dogs opposing health care and campaign contributions?
Conservatives who are counting on Blue Dog Democrats to scuttle healthcare reform will be “sorely disappointed,” one of the Blue Dogs’ leading members said this weekend. Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.), the chairman of the centrist Blue Dogs’ healthcare task force, said that that the coalition would seek to “resuscitate” the House healthcare reform through amendments in the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s markup of the bill this week. “There’s some folks from the right that have been calling my office very pleased that they perceive I’m trying to kill healthcare,” Ross said during an interview with National Public Radio (NPR) on Saturday. “At the end of the day, I suspect they’re going to be sorely disappointed, because none of us within the Blue Dog Coalition are trying to kill healthcare reform.” The House healthcare bill made it through mark-up in two committees this past week after having been unveiled on Monday of last week. Some centrist Democrats on the House Ways and Means and Ed
The Blue Dogs have been hogging the health care spotlight for the last week. Now they’re having to share with it with the Senate Finance Committee chairman, Max Baucus, and the rest of his small troupe. The Gang of Six — Baucus and five committee colleagues — got their picture in The Times today, a snappily annotated photograph of a recent meeting. The six senators gather twice daily, according to the accompanying article, in hopes of hammering out a “bipartisan deal” on health care reform. Though their efforts are ongoing, significant details of of their emerging agreement are now circulating. So far, says Brien Beutler at TPMDC, the gang’s plan seems to be one that the U. S. Chamber of Commerce can support. In a recent letter, the Chamber reminded the negotiators that it opposes any “new government-run insurance plan” as well an “any mandate” on employers to provide insurance to workers or pay a tax. “That’s basically the plan Max Baucus’ Senate Finance Committee is set to propose,”
The seven Blue Dog Democrats holding up health care reform legislation in the House Energy and Commerce Committee have received tens of thousands more dollars from health and insurance interests than other Democrats on the same committee, a new report finds. An analysis of campaign finance data by the Public Campaign Action Fund finds a fairly strong correlation between private industry donations and opposition to health care reform. Lawmakers in both the House and Senate who voted against proposed legislation this congressional cycle, the report found, received roughly 65 percent more money from health and insurance interests than those who supported the bills. Sources: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/28/recalcitrant-blue-dogs-ra_n_246257.
