Earlier this week, Blue Dog Democrats sent a letter to leadership:

as leaders of the Blue Dog Coalition, we worked before the House vote to target and remove spending in the bill that does not have the kind of stimulative, or long-term job creation potential, that is needed. We achieved some modest success, in the removal of hundreds of millions of dollars, before the House vote, that we believe was either insufficiently stimulative or unrelated to long-term economic growth. We believe this spending is more properly addressed during the course of the normal appropriations process, which imposes tough budget choices and is critical to Congress’ efforts to keep to a fiscally responsible path.
Now that the Senate is debating its stimulus and recovery package, reports indicate certain senators, including Senator Nelson of Nebraska and Senator Collins of Maine, are engaged in a bipartisan effort to pare further spending. We believe that’s a highly worthwhile goal, and that there are additional provisions that would be better left for consideration in regular order.

This seems like a good time to make a little constructive noise. The letter is nice and all, but how about being alarmed now and saying something like, “No, we can’t do something as big as rolling back welfare reform outside of ‘regular order.’ This is too much, whatever three Republicans say.”

It seems to me that Blue Dogs could be a real headache for Obama-Reid-Pelosi over the next few years. The Blue Dogs should know that. And use their power.