The Obama transition team’s efforts to reach out to key groups of congressional Democrats continued Thursday as one of the president elect’s top economic advisers met with House Blue Dogs.
The discussion between Jason Furman and a handful of Blue Dogs took place in the office of House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md., and focused mostly on the need to begin addressing the booming deficit and the long-term fiscal challenges facing the government during the Obama administration. Participants said the meeting was to touch base and that Furman was there mostly to listen.
Members of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of deficit hawks, are eager for President-elect Barack Obama to put his calls for fiscal discipline into practice when he takes office — no easy task given the push to enact enough government spending to give the economy a boost early next year, not to mention the pent up demand among Democrats to expand health care coverage.
But, so far the Dogs are optimistic.
“I was very satisfied with the meeting,” said Rep. Baron P. Hill, D-Ind., who was selected Wednesday to be one of three Blue Dog co-chairs in the 111th Congress.
The group expects to have 51 to 52 members next year and could serve as either be a vital ally for Obama or a thorn in his side.
Hill said Blue Dogs expressed their interest in turning the “pay-as-you-go” rule, which requires new mandatory spending and tax cuts to be offset, into law to give it more teeth.
Blue Dogs said they also discussed their desire to have the new administration highlight and find a more prominent use for Treasury’s annual Financial Report of the United States Government, which is released in December. Many in coalition, led by Rep.Jim Cooper of Tennessee, believe the report gives a more accurate, and pessimistic, accounting of the government’s fiscal situation.
The report looks at the governments books through the lens of accrual accounting — which recognizes the future budgetary impact of an action when it occurs — rather than when the resulting cash flow occurs, as is the case with the acountnig method used now by the government. Boosters of the report believe it more accurately reflects the cost to government of programs such as Medicare and Social Security.
“The situation is so much more dire than the Bush administration’s made it out to be,” said Rep. Allen Boyd, D-Fla., a current Blue Dog leader. “That message has to be gotten out.”
— David Clarke and Chuck Conlon
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