In her coverage of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of 40 House Democrats committed to balancing the budget, The Washington Post‘s Lori Montgomery speaks to Democracy Co-Editor Andrei Cherny, among others, about the Democrats’ relationship to fiscal discipline. Writes Montgomery:

Richard Kogan, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said Democrats were able to hold together in part because, in this political environment, fiscal discipline means opposing efforts by a Republican White House to extend Bush’s tax cuts past their 2010 expiration date, a move that would deprive the federal government of billions of dollars in revenue.

But that consensus is likely to evaporate if a Democrat wins the White House next year, said Andrei Cherny, co-editor of Democracy, a quarterly journal devoted to liberal ideas. The magazine is hosting a forum today titled, “Balanced Budgets: Holy Grail or Overrated?” featuring such Democratic heavyweights as former Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers; Clinton economic adviser Gene Sperling; former Virginia governor Mark R. Warner; and Jeff Faux, founder of the Economic Policy Institute, a District think tank.

What is now a consensus in Congress will quickly dissolve into a real vigorous debate about what is most important. The trade-offs are fiscal discipline versus health care and energy independence and all the other things Democrats believe in passionately,” Cherny said.

Read the full article here.