The Dog Days of Summer

The phrase “dog days of summer,” apparently originally stemming from a reference to Sirius, the “Dog Star,” refers the hottest days of summer, typically extending from July through August, when it is too hot to get things done. It may also be an apt way of summing up where things stand on healthcare reform legislation.

If nothing else, this month was the month the “Blue Dog” Democrats had their place in the sun. Their opposition to the House bill slowed progress on a final House bill, but in the meantime they were able to force some compromises to be made in the bill.

Interestingly enough, the origin of the term “Blue Dog Democrat,” meaning a conservative Democrat, is connected with Billy Tauzin, the president and CEO of PhRMA. Mr Tauzin, starting in 1980, had been a Democratic Congressman from Louisiana. In the mid-1980s, a Louisiana artist named George Rodrigue began painting a series of pictures of a blue dog, paintings that eventually become relatively famous. Mr. Tauzin eventually co-founded a group of conservative Democrats who called themselves Blue Dogs to distinguish themselves from “yellow dog” Democrats, a term that apparently originated in the 1928 Presidential campaign of the New York Democrat Al Smith to describe loyal Democrats. While many Southern Democrats opposed the Smith’s nomination, others were such loyal Democrats that it was said that they would “vote for a yellow dog if he ran on the Democratic ticket." Blue Dog Democrats, by contrast, had no such party loyalties. Mr. Tauzin even ended up switching over and becoming a Republican.

In any case, it is now clear that there will be no votes in either the House or the Senate on a healthcare reform bill until September. Whether there will be any progress at all, such as draft legislation from the Senate Finance Committee, is still an open question.