As Adam notes below, the Blue Dog Coalition has endorsed the House Budget Committee's FY 2008 budget resolution. In fact, the Coalition considered but decided against offering an alternative to it. The alternative's author, Budget Committee member Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN), could not convince the House Rules Committee to allow him to offer the alternative as an amendment, because the Blue Dogs had agreed to endorse the Budget Committee plan. But the Cooper "reality" budget initative merits a moment's consideration. It assumes the extension of about half of the 2001/03 Bush tax cuts -- principally middle-class and small business tax cuts -- calling concretely for a "phase in [of] any tax increases" in regular rate adjustments over a period of three years. Finally, a specific policy proposal with details involving a phase out of major portions of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts is circulating in the House. Whether Rep. Cooper's "reality" budget can move forward from here remains to be seen. But for those worried about how to provide a "soft landing" for the econony while rolling back the the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, there is now a specific policy proposal with a three-year schedule of rate adjustments to hang your hat on.