Tuesday Group and 'Blue Dogs' Join Forces to Fight Deficit
By Catharine Richert and Bart Jansen
Congressional Quarterly Today Print Edition
July 16, 2008 - 11.07pm
Watch for the House's most fiscally conservative Democrats and Republicans to start meeting regularly, in the same room at the same time.The GOP Tuesday Group and the Democratic "Blue Dogs" have long shared the goal of reducing the federal deficit.
The two caucuses met together in the past week along with Pete Peterson, creator and benefactor of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to deficit reduction, and David Walker, who earlier this year left the top position at the Government Accountability Office to run the foundation.
The topic: what deficit hawks love to talk about most, the political difficulties of pay-as-you-go rules, lawmakers said.
"Some of the ideas Blue Dogs have, we feel the Tuesday Group has, too," said Tuesday Group co-chairman Mark Steven Kirk , R-Ill. "I think it would be good to talk about the overlap."
Blue Dog Earl Pomeroy , D-N.D., was not at the meeting but says there has been some discussion about regular gatherings. "I don't know if it would be a supper club or something like that," he said. "We need to have a commitment across party lines no matter what going forward," he said about slashing the deficit.
Because the foundation is a nonprofit, it cannot endorse a candidate or post political advertisements.
But that doesn't mean it can't encourage the Tuesday Group and the Blue Dogs to work together, said foundation spokeswoman Elizabeth Wilner.
"We can make nonpartisan efforts, and we can start demanding more from Washington to stop [deficit spending]," she said.
