Clinton, CBO projections and the danger of Blue Dogs

No one can take a complicated subject and thoughtfully explain it the way Barack Obama can. On the other hand, no one can take a complicated subject and do this with it the way Bill Clinton can.

Speaking a few days after the CBO estimated that the White House's latest "gamechanger," an independent Medicare Advisory Commission to set prices, would save little money over 10 years, Clinton urged policy-makers -- and here he means Democrats -- to not accept the CBO's scores without adding a dollop of common sense. " I recognize that if you're in that budget office, you've got to project the future," Clinton said. But certain programs would realize savings "regardless of whether the mathematical rules they are now up with will prove it or not." He said that those with a stake in changing the system "almost always get the short end of the stick" when it comes to budget projections. "In Washington, we strain a lot of gnats while we''re swallowing camels." Lost in the debate about how much health care reform will cost, Clinton said, is the debate about whether the reforms will work. (I took this to be an implicit criticism of Blue Dog Democrats who focus near-obsessively with the impact of health reform on the deficit and of committee chairs who have imbued the CBO with near mystical powers.)

My emphasis. I'm not entirely clear what straining gnats means, but it's a great image.

Meanwhile, in a true Krugmaniad, Paul Krugman does not even begin to think that the so-called Blue Dogs are anything but honest, if incoherent, in their criticisms of the various health care proposals.

One interpretation, then, is that the Blue Dogs are basically following in Mr. Tauzin’s footsteps: if their position is incoherent, it’s because they’re nothing but corporate tools, defending special interests. And as the Center for Responsive Politics pointed out in a recent report, drug and insurance companies have lately been pouring money into Blue Dog coffers.

But I guess I’m not quite that cynical. After all, today’s Blue Dogs are politicians who didn’t go the Tauzin route — they didn’t switch parties even when the G.O.P. seemed to hold all the cards and pundits were declaring the Republican majority permanent. So these are Democrats who, despite their relative conservatism, have shown some commitment to their party and its values.

Now, however, they face their moment of truth. For they can’t extract major concessions on the shape of health care reform without dooming the whole project: knock away any of the four main pillars of reform, and the whole thing will collapse — and probably take the Obama presidency down with it.

Is that what the Blue Dogs really want to see happen? We’ll soon find out.

I think what motivates the Blue Dogs on health care is nothing more than a knee jerk fear that their more conservative constituents will throw them out if they go along with anything that can be branded by potential oppenents as "tax and spend." I think those fears are obsolete, but there you have it. Having a safe seat is more important than being effective legislators -- and also more important than the relative success of their party. Right now, they have nothing to lose by opposing both health care reform and the deficit-neutral proposals that would help pay for it.