As the Capitol reacts to the death of Jack Murtha and remembers
his legacy, it's worth pointing out that the news will make it
even harder for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to secure the 218
votes needed to pass health care legislation.
Back in November, the House passed its health care bill by a
narrow 220 to 215 margin, with 39 Democrats voting against it.
Since then, the one Republican who voted for it -- Joseph Cao --
has indicated that he would not support the bill a second time
around given the weaker language on abortion in the Senate
version. In addition, Florida Rep. Robert Wexler
already retired prematurely. Factor in Murtha's death today,
and Pelosi is down to 217 votes. This doesn't even take into
account the pro-life Democrats led by Bart Stupak who are
prepared to vote "no." While there's been talk that Pelosi had
some votes in reserve the first time around, the point is that
those members felt they needed to vote against the bill -- and
the political environment has deteriorated substantially for
Democrats since then.
With Murtha's death, the Cook
Political Report has now moved his Pennsylvania district to
the "toss up" category. If Republicans can field a good candidate
and gain the seat, it would further reinforce the fears among
Democrats in swing districts and make them less likely to jump on
board with Pelosi. Chris Cillizza suggests the most likely date for the
special election would be May 18. The special election to replace
Wexler is scheduled for April 13, and is expected to go Democrat.
UPDATE: Another complicating factor is Rep. Neil Abercrombie. The
Hawaii Democrat announced early last month that he would resign
Feb. 28 run for governor. However, in his
statement announcing his resignation, he said that he had
ensured Pelosi that he’d be around to continue supporting the
health care bill. Back when he made that statement, Scott Brown
hadn’t won yet, and thus the end of this month seemed like plenty
of time to finalize the health care bill. Now that the timeline
has been pushed back, perhaps he’d postpone the effective date of
his resignation if Pelosi still needed his vote.
UPDATE II: An earlier version of this post suggested that
Democrats would be unable to pass the bill with 217 votes, but as
a reader points out there's still the theoretical chance of
passing it 217-216. So I changed the wording.
