House Republicans’ Vote Margin Is Looking Pret-ty Thin Right Now | EUROtoday

WASHINGTON — In the span of some hours, House Republican leaders simply watched their already slim vote margin slip to about as weak as it will possibly get.

A day after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) resignation from Congress took impact, information broke early Tuesday that Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.) had instantly died on the age of 65. Then, extra information broke that one other Republican congressman, 80-year-old Jim Baird of Indiana, was within the hospital after a automobile crash.

The House, which has 435 members when each seat is crammed, has already been working with two empty seats. Sylvester Turner (D-Texas) died final March, and Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) resigned in November after changing into her state’s governor.

Now, with Greene gone, LaMalfa lifeless, and Baird within the hospital, the House could have a complete of 430 members in attendance, at most. That breaks all the way down to 217 Republicans and 213 Democrats. Assuming all 430 present up for each vote, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) will want a majority of them, or at the very least 216, to vote his means.

Put one other means, Johnson can solely afford to lose one vote on something. And that’s assuming all members are current and all different Republicans vote his means.

It’s a grim state of affairs for the speaker, who has already spent the previous yr being routinely rebuked by GOP colleagues who teamed up with Democrats to pressure votes on payments he didn’t wish to carry up, not the least of which was laws to pressure Trump’s Justice Department to launch all of its information on the late youngster intercourse trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

“I have not lost control of the House,” Johnson declared final monthas reasonable Republicans went round him to pressure a vote to increase soon-to-expire Affordable Care Act subsidies.

President Donald Trump introduced up Republicans’ tight new vote margin throughout remarks on the Kennedy Center on Tuesday.

Baird and his spouse “had a pretty bad accident and we’re praying that they get out of the hospital very quickly,” Trump mentioned. As for the GOP’s shrinking vote margin, the president mentioned, “It’s not a big majority but it is a unified majority and it’s people that know what it takes to make America great again.”

The math of House votes may be illusory. Some Republicans routinely speak powerful about opposing Johnson on key votes, however then cave ultimately (we see you, Rep. Victoria Spartz). Some are solely prepared to buck Johnson if their vote doesn’t resolve a invoice’s end result.

The solely Republican who has reliably mentioned he’ll vote no on one thing after which really does it’s Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who has been a thorn in each Johnson’s and Trump’s aspect. His vote additionally simply turned considerably extra essential within the House.

Trump didn’t do himself any favors by attacking Massie on Monday. In a social media publishthe president re-upped his endorsement of a major challenger to the Kentucky lawmaker and referred to as Massie “the Worst ‘Republican’ Congressman we have had in many years.”

Massie responded by sharing the president’s publish and mocking it: “i ain’t reading all that. im happy for u tho or sorry that happened,” he wrote Tuesday on social media.

Democrats will elect somebody to Turner’s former House seat in a runoff election on Jan. 31. With that seat crammed, and presuming Baird is again within the House by then, the brand new House complete could be 432 members. But the tiny vote margin would be the identical: with 218 Republicans and 214 Democrats, Johnson nonetheless can’t afford to lose multiple vote.