Two Republican Votes for the State-Aid Bill

By Chris Good

The House reconvened today, breaking its summer recess to vote on a state-aid package--$16 billion for state Medicaid funding and another $10 billion for education aid--that Democrats, coincidentally, want to make into a campaign issue. Vote against it, they say, and you vote against the teachers.

As Hotline OnCall's Reid Wilson notes, two Republican congressmen voted for it: Louisiana's Joseph Cao and Delaware's Mike Castle.

Notes on the votes: Cao was also the only Republican to vote for the health care reform bill in the House before eventually voting against it on final passage in March; Castle, meanwhile, is running for Senate in the purple state of Delaware, currently leading Democratic opponent Chris Coons by somewhere in the neighborhood of 11 to 13 percentage points.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/08/two-republican-votes-for-the-state-aid-bill/61283/