As you may know, the House just passed (once again) an expansion to S-CHIP which will, of course, be signed by incoming President Obama after two vetoes from George Bush. In 2007, SSP made a hobby of keeping a hairy eyeball on the twisted reptiles who voted against providing healthcare to children, sure that it would make a potent election issue (apart from the obvious wrongness of the vote). So now we’re here to revisit our Crumb-Bum Roll Call.
First, a little update. Six members of Congress have taken themselves off the crumb-bum rolls, including one Democrat:
Diaz-Balart, Lincoln (FL-21)
Diaz-Balart, Mario (FL-25)
Frelinghuysen, Rodney (NJ-11)
McCotter, Thaddeus (MI-11)
Ros-Lehtinen, Ileana (FL-18)
Taylor, Gene (MS-04)
Don’t know what caused Taylor’s change of heart (or Frelinghuysen’s), but clearly the Diaz-Balarts & IRL are hoping to ward off tough challeneges in the future, as they had in 2008. Goes to show you that even a losing effort can have a real impact.
Thad McCotter, meanwhile, won by just six points in a totally unheralded race. Smart move on his part – but some of his similarly-situated colleagues (eg, Ken Calvert, Dan Lungren, Judy Biggert) still have their heads deep in the wingnut sand. Quelle surprise.
On the flipside, two Republicans decided to join their crumb-bum-alicious brethren and switch from “yes” to “no”:
Latham, Tom (IA-04)
McMorris Rodgers, Cathy (WA-05)
I’d really love to see what their explanations are.
Anyhow, probably the most important detail here is that eleven GOPers who voted against S-CHIP in the 110th Congress are now looking for other work:
Chabot, Steve (OH-01)
Drake, Thelma (VA-02)
Feeney, Tom (FL-24)
Goode, Virgil (VA-05)
Hayes, Robin (NC-08)
Keller, Ric (FL-08)
Knollenberg, Joe (MI-09)
Kuhl, Randy (NY-29)
Musgrave, Marilyn (CO-04)
Sali, Bill (ID-01)
Walberg, Tim (MI-07)
Meanwhile, three Republicans couldn’t save themselves even with S-CHIP “ayes”:
English, Phil (PA-03)
Porter, Jon (NV-03)
Shays, Chris (CT-04)
Indeed, every freshman Democrat except for Bobby Bright (sheesh) voted for the bill. (The only other Dem holdout was Jim Marshall. Enough already.) A number of freshman Republicans voted yes as well:
Austria, Steve (OH-07)
Cao, Joseph (LA-02)
Lance, Leonard (NJ-07)
Lee, Chris (NY-26)
Paulsen, Erik (MN-03)
Thompson, Glenn (PA-05)
Cao we know about. Lance, Paulsen and to some extent Lee are in competitive districts. I’m not sure what explains Thompson’s or Austria’s votes, though.
In any event, the good news is two-fold: This expansion of S-CHIP will finally be signed into law, and plenty of GOPers are still fool enough to vote against extremely popular legislation that helped do in a number of their caucus-mates. I’m really liking 2009 so far.