Word: blues
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Every political coalition needs a catchy name. The 1840s had the Know-Nothings, the 1980s had the Boll Weevils, and now there are the Blue Dogs, a group of 52 fiscally conservative Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives whose staunch resistance to the White House's health-care legislation efforts might delay a vote well past President Obama's August deadline. (Read "Why the Blue Dogs Are Slowing Health-Care Reform...
...party they felt had shifted too far to the left. These disgruntled Democrats decided to form a coalition to stand against their more liberal party members. They held meetings in the office of former Louisiana Representative Billy Tauzin, who reportedly had one of Cajun artist George Rodrigue's famous Blue Dog paintings hanging on his wall. The Blue Dog Coalition's website also lists as an inspiration the 1928 term Yellow Dog, used to refer to a Southern Democrat who was more likely to vote for a dog than for a Republican. Instead of being blinded by party loyalty, this...
...tried), will not be enough to get over the finish line. Health-care reform is so politically fraught that it needs a strong White House presence in the room, something that happened only late last week in the House (when Emanuel became personally involved in the talks with the Blue Dogs) but has yet to start with the Senate...
...billion-to-$320 billion shortfall has been particularly tough. Obama's original proposal to raise the tax deduction for charitable giving by the nation's highest earners seemed dead on arrival, while the House idea of taxing the rich directly has run into resistance from conservative Democrats known as Blue Dogs. One proposal that has gained traction in the past week is to tax pricey, so-called Cadillac health-insurance plans, either directly or by taxing the insurer who provides them. The plans given to many Wall Street and Fortune 500 executives, for example, are worth about...
...this proposal; while the current bill says Washington would foot the bill for these new Medicaid enrollees, states that are having a hard enough time as it is paying their share of the program are wary of what might happen several years from now. At the same time, Blue Dogs in the House are upset at some of the proposed cuts to Medicare insurers. They worry that these cuts will lead to a dangerous decrease in Medicare services in already underserved rural areas. This was the biggest sticking point in House negotiations over the weekend...