Blue Dogs Take Aim At Record Deficits

Blue Dog Democrats who helped the Democrats retake Congress last fall are now focused on pushing the issue of a balanced budget to the top of the list for Congressional issues.

The Blue Dog Coalition, a band of more than 40 House Democrats committed to fiscal discipline, plans to introduce legislation today that would impose caps on some spending, enshrine pay-as-you-go rules in federal law and authorize automatic spending cuts to enforce them. The group also wants to amend the U.S. Constitution to require a balanced budget and to create an array of budget provisions that would focus more attention on what it sees as pork-barrel spending.