Mike Lillis has a nice piece in The Washington Independent about the House Blue Dog caucus’ perverse obstructionism of Jim Webb’s bill boosting veterans benefits on fiscal austerity grounds. You can expect more of this kind of nonsense under an Obama administration. Hundreds of billions of spending on a futile war that a Republican asks for? Blue Dogs love it. Giant tax cuts for the rich that Republicans ask for? Blue Dogs might be for that, too. But spend a single penny on a Democratic priority? Hell no, that’s time for fiscal responsibility.
And of course it’s not just the Blue Dogs. Expect most institutions who cried blood every time Bill Clinton wanted to spend a dime, then went mum on the enormous post-9/11 defense spending and war fighting orgy, to suddenly recover their taste for fiscal discipline in January of 2009.