"A Blue Dog Knows the Way"

How the Blue Dog Democrats Shaped the 1996 Federal Budget

As Portrayed in the Alabama Press

By Geni Certain

Jacksonville State University

April 2005

Sometimes headline writers just need to be flogged. A good candidate is the Birmingham Post-Herald copy editor who wrote the headline on a story out of Washington the morning of October 26, 1995. Just three words stacked in one column: "Houses debate budgets." Anyone reading them (if anyone did) would be taken aback by the historical — almost hysterical — language that followed, describing the budget debate going on in Congress that would escalate over the next several hours.

"In what political leaders agreed was a defining moment in the nation's history, the Senate and the House opened debate yesterday on massive Republican budget bills that would dramatically remake government while balancing the federal budget."[1]

Readers might be skeptical that the debate would have any lasting importance; then again, they might not. In late October of 1995, it would have been difficult for anyone who read a newspaper to be unaware that the federal budget process was in crisis, that the nation's two major political parties were polarized nearly to the point of paralysis, that the federal government was in real danger of shutting down, and that compromise was no more than a flicker of hope somewhere in the future. They would not be surprised that the bills being debated in the House and Senate "represent nearly a year's worth of political maneuvering by the GOP," but they might not believe that the bills' passage "would leave almost no area of government untouched."

Depending on their own politics, Alabama readers might smile or smirk at presumptive Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole's exuberance about "the most historic moment" in his 34 years in Congress. The expressions would likely reverse over Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle's dire prediction that it was "a day that … Republicans will regret … and probably in the not-too-distant future."

And, finally, Alabamians might feel some satisfaction in knowing that while a president from Arkansas, a speaker of the house from Georgia, a House minority leader from Missouri, and a Senate majority leader from Kansas all shoved out their chins in a stance of immovability, two Alabama congressmen offered a way out of the standoff.

They are Representatives Glen Browder of Jacksonville and Bud Cramer of Huntsville, founding members of a coalition of moderate House Democrats who call themselves "Blue Dogs" and who not only march to an independent rhythm but beat a different drum in Congress.

The Blue Dogs, though small in number, have been a major irritant to the leadership of both parties during the arduous budget process, and the press has glorified them as a voice of reason in a savage political war. The Blue Dogs have seen more defeats than victories in the legislation they've introduced, but the provisions of their bills have been quietly incorporated into one after another of the Republican spending bills — and their greatest victory is yet to come.

The group formed early in the year with 23 members, all of them Democrats and most of them from the South. They felt a growing separation from the increasingly liberal party leadership and hoped to move the party back toward the center. They already could see that Southern voters were becoming disaffected with Democratic liberalism, and a move toward the center was politically expedient both in terms of representing their districts and in retaining their seats in Congress.

Browder recalled in an interview in 2005 that he, Louisiana Representatives Billy Tauzin and Jimmy Hayes, and Texas Representative Charlie Stenholm first discussed forming the group during a hunting trip before the 1994 elections. They began meeting informally in Tauzin's and Hayes's offices "in groups of three, four, five, six, seven — it was a fluid thing."

"We determined that we were going to have to chart our own course. And we also plighted our troth to each other that we were willing to risk our careers in the Democratic Party. …If you're going to cross the Democratic Party and stay a Democrat, you're marginalizing yourself. We accepted that and started talking about, 'How do we build a movement?'

"Then the election came. We had anticipated that we would be working against a Democratic majority. We didn't know that the Republicans would take over in '94. But it worked out perfectly for us because the Republicans were in the majority, but not enough that they could run roughshod. They had to have some Democratic votes."

"It put us in a very good position," Browder continued. "The Republicans were going to have to work with somebody on the Democratic side. The Democrats, on the other hand, might win a few things or they could stop the Republicans if they could hold all the Democrats, so they had to work with us."[2]

The 1994 election brought a wave of change to Washington with 73 new Republican House members who had signed onto Georgia Republican Newt Gingrich's Contract With America, a package of proposals that promised to reduce government spending, balance the federal budget, impose term limits on members of Congress and provide a sizable tax cut. Gingrich, who became Speaker of the House when the 104th Congress took office in January 1995, intended to get all the provisions of the Contract With America passed in the House in the first 100 days of the session.[3]

House Democrats, now in the minority for the first time in 40 years, were divided on the Contract With America. Their leadership opposed virtually every tenet of the Contract, but they followed President Bill Clinton's lead. Clinton had his own ideas about "reinventing government" to reduce spending and balance the budget, and after some initial reluctance he also would offer a tax cut. The moderate and conservative Democrats, who had not yet made public the existence of their coalition, supported balancing the budget and opposed any tax cuts until that happened.

With the White House occupied by a Democrat and both houses of Congress controlled by Republicans who had a mandate for economic reform, 1995 was a year of extraordinary conflict in Congress from the very beginning. The group that would become the Blue Dog Coalition was positioned squarely in the middle and was growing. The moderates saw an opportunity to mediate the extremes of both parties and enact what they frequently would label "common sense" legislation.

They began their campaign in a vote on January 26 on a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. The amendment had three requirements designed to put an end to habitual deficit spending:

1. A balanced budget by 2002 or two years after ratification by the states;

2. A three-fifths majority vote to allow deficit spending once balance was achieved;

3. A three-fifths majority vote to allow an increase in the federal debt.

Blue Dogs, still incognito, voted for the amendment but helped to block a requirement for a three-fifths majority vote for tax increases[4] — language that would have made any tax increase a near impossibility.

Some of the Blue Dogs had long advocated balancing the budget. Deficit spending had become chronic — the last time the federal budget had shown a surplus was 1969, and many in Congress had concluded that the only way to regain control of spending was to amend the Constitution. Stenholm had introduced balanced-budget amendments several times previously and had, in fact, introduced an alternate version a few days earlier. Browder had discussed balancing the budget with an Anniston Star reporter[5] the previous January and had written in a column for the Lee County Eagle in April 1994 that the country was emerging from the recession of the early 1990s and that the improving economy would reduce the deficit and dependence on credit, enabling Congress to address the long-term issues of health care, welfare and crime.[6]

The Alabama press gave front page coverage to the vote, noting that the national debt was approaching $4.7 trillion. The Associated Press article that most of the papers published, and an editorial in the Montgomery Advertiser the following Sunday,[7] quoted Browder saying the ratification process would foster a "great public debate" that would force Americans "to focus on what they want from their government, what benefits they will surrender in the name of fiscal responsibility, and what burdens they will shoulder to do the important tasks they ask their government to do." The ratification process never occurred, as the bill failed in the Senate by a single vote, but the debate that Browder described had already begun and is still going on.[8]

Two weeks later, the Blue Dogs made good their pledge to oppose their own party when President Clinton proposed a $1.61 trillion budget for fiscal 1996. Browder, as a member of the House Budget Committee, "lectured" Office of Management and Budget Director Alice Rivlin that there was "a new mood in Congress," according to an Associated Press report by Alan Fram that was published in several Alabama newspapers. "We favor cutting spending first rather than borrow-and-spend, tax-and-spend, even tax-cut-and-spend," Browder said.[9]

The group went public in a Washington news conference on February 14. The Alabama press hailed the new group with 19 news articles and four editorials over the next five days. "They're still Democrats, but 23 House members are not exactly in the fold," the Anniston Star, Browder's hometown newspaper, reported February 15. "The separate group … has promised its own agenda, staking out independent positions on everything from tax cuts to welfare.[10]

Members of the group, which took as its official name "the Coalition," were Browder, Cramer, Tauzin, Hayes, Stenholm, Blanche Lambert Lincoln of Arkansas, Gary Condit of California, Nathan Deal of Georgia, William Lipinski of Illinois, Scotty Baesler of Kentucky, Collin Peterson and David Minge of Minnesota, Mike Parker and Gene Taylor of Mississippi, Pat Danner of Missouri, Bill Brewster of Oklahoma, John Tanner of Tennessee, Ralph Hall, Pete Geren and Greg Laughlin of Texas, Bill Orton of Utah and L.F. Payne and Owen Pickett of Virginia. Condit and Deal were named co-chairmen. Browder was to head the group's budget task force and Cramer the task force on crime.

Not all of the news coverage was positive. Instead of focusing on the group's independence, as the Coalition press releases had suggested[11] some articles, such as the one published in the Daily Home in Talladega, a town in Browder's district, magnified his comment that identification with the conservative group was "a way for some, particularly the Southern Democrats, to survive.[12] A Daily Home editorial the next day suggested that, "if the Coalition is nothing more than a subterfuge designed to support the Republican agenda while remaining in the Democratic Party, then they should follow the lead of [Senator] Richard Shelby, Alabama's best-known surveyor of political expediency: Just switch."[13] Other papers also portrayed the Coalition's debut as a prelude to party switching. "'Centrist' Democrats or Republican wanna-be's?" asked reporter Bill Ferry in the Huntsville News, the more conservative of the two daily newspapers in Cramer's hometown. A Gadsden Times editorial saw Browder's and Cramer's participation in The Coalition as an expression of frustration with the Democratic Party leadership, comparing their "tone" to Shelby's just before he switched parties.[14]

Questions about party switching were inevitable, although the Coalition members all said they were not considering such a change. The questions turned out to be appropriate, for within the year, five of the original Coalition members — Deal, Tauzin, Hayes, Parker and Laughlin — did, indeed, become Republicans.[15]

Post-Herald columnist Ted Bryant took a few days to chew over the news of the Coalition before issuing a surprisingly accurate prediction. He saw the emergence of the Coalition and a recent spate of party switching as the latest evidence of "party fracturing," which he said was minimizing the importance of political parties to voters — and thus to candidates. Bryant noted that the party switching was about getting elected, not ideology (implying that Coalition members would switch to the GOP if they thought it necessary to retain their seats), and correctly predicted that Alabama and the rest of the South within a few years would be solidly Republican. [16]

While The Coalition still had the attention of the media, Browder gave a speech on the House floor announcing a proposal to tie tax cuts to actual progress toward balancing the budget.[17] The idea, which Browder introduced as a bill on March 8, treated tax cuts as a dividend to be earned by meeting yearly deficit-reduction goals. No progress, no tax cut — and tax cuts already in place would be withdrawn in the case of deficit backsliding. The idea gained some support in the House, evolving into an amendment co-sponsored by Coalition member Bill Orton and by Republicans Michael Castle of Delaware, Fred Upton of Michigan, and Bill Martini of New Jersey.[18]

The Alabama press did not pay much attention when Browder first introduced the idea. It was more interested in reaction to a Birmingham News analysis of federal spending in Alabama and what would happen to the state economy without it. Reporters Chris Roberts and Dave Parks determined that approximately one-third of Alabama's budget came from the federal government, much of it in the form of funding for welfare, Medicare and Medicaid, all programs targeted for large cuts in the Republican budget proposal. Alabama's Republican governor, Fob James, said the benefits of a balanced budget would outweigh the hardship caused by reduced federal spending in Alabama, and he contended that all federal money for the state should be delivered in a lump sum, which the state could spend as it saw fit. [19]