Today, U.S. Congressman Henry Cuellar (TX-28), a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, announced the Coalition’s call for a bipartisan budget compromise.

On April 4, 2011, the Senior Leadership of the Blue Dog Coalition wrote a letter to President Barack Obama urging for a long term spending bill to prevent a government shutdown. “As we travel around our districts,” the Blue Dog leaders wrote, “we hear time and again from our constituents that they are tired of the overheated political rhetoric that is dominating both parties and want us to begin mature conversations about our long-term fiscal problems.”

The letter emphasizes that the short-term bills that are currently keeping the government operating on a week by week basis are not only costly to taxpayers, but also create too much uncertainty for both the public and private sectors. “Fiscal responsibility remains my top priority,” said Congressman Cuellar. “I want to work in a bipartisan fashion to make responsible cuts to get our fiscal House in order and restore economic prosperity.”

Last week, Congressman Cuellar and his colleagues in the Blue Dog Coalition released the “Blue Dog Benchmarks for Fiscal Reform,” a set of targets for long term deficit reduction that includes cutting the deficit by $4 trillion over the next 10 years.

“We need to have a serious conversation on both sides of the aisle about the nation’s fiscal future,” Cuellar said. “Rather than focusing on partisan ideological purity, we need to find a common sense middle ground that keeps the government operating and guarantees that taxpayer dollars are spent wisely. As we move forward, I will continue to work to reach a bipartisan agreement.”

Last month, Congressman Cuellar helped introduce H.R. 1043, the Reduce Unnecessary Spending Act, which gives the President and Congress the authority to cut wasteful spending out of large pieces of legislation. The savings from such cuts would be dedicated to deficit reduction.

Congressman Cuellar is a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of United States Congressional Representatives from the Democratic Party who are dedicated to the financial stability and national security of the United States. They are united behind a core set of beliefs that transcend partisan politics which include representing the center of the House of Representatives.    
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