WASHINGTON — Donald Norcross was recovering from surgery in a Camden hospital last year when his House of Representatives colleagues voted 216-215 to advance legislation to cut taxes for wealthy Americans and gut public health and food services.
Norcross later said he would have voted against the bill if he’d been at the Capitol — which would have stymied the measure with a decisive 216th vote.
Now, the health of another New Jersey lawmaker could have national implications.
Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-7th) has not voted in the House chamber since March 5, when he cast a vote to fund the Department of Homeland Security two months into an ongoing funding shutdown. He has also missed committee markup sessions — meetings when members edit and vote on legislation — in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Congress was not in session during the first two weeks of April.
“Congressman is addressing a personal health matter. He will be returning to a full regular schedule,” Dan Scharfenberger, Kean’s chief of staff, said March 19 in an emailed response to questions from NJ Spotlight News. Scharfenberger and Noelle Berriet, a Kean spokesperson, did not respond Wednesday to written questions about the congressman’s health and work schedule.
Congress is about to embark on an extraordinarily busy stretch in Washington, where Republicans hold a thin House majority of 218-213 and are drafting a bill, expected to be $70 billion, to fund the immigration enforcement agencies. The text of that bill could be unveiled as soon as this week.
Hard-line Republicans in the Senate are pushing an aggressive bill to “supercharge” mass deportation.
Congress is expecting a funding request of $200 billion or more from the Pentagon to pay for the war against Iran that President Donald Trump began on Feb. 28 without congressional approval.
And members have also started writing the next federal budget, due in October, and are holding budget hearings with input from agency heads and Cabinet secretaries.
Kean, 57, cast a critical vote in early March against a bipartisan airplane safety bill that had broad support.
Instead, Kean sponsored a more narrow safety bill. He was not on the House floor to vote for it on Tuesday as it passed. Kean’s absence from the House and the power of his vote — yea or nay – would not have altered the outcome of any floor vote so far.
In the closely divided House, where Republicans can lose two defections on a given vote and pass a bill, the power of each member is amplified. It’s a story that’s played out again and again this Congress.
On a labor bill in January, New Jersey Republicans Jeff Van Drew and Chris Smith held out against party leaders, ultimately voting no and sinking the legislation.
“We’re totally in control of the House,” Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana told reporters after his lieutenants failed to whip that vote into passage.
In late January, as Republicans held open a vote past the allotted time, Texas Republican Wesley Hunt rushed to the Capitol to cast the decisive vote against a bill to military operations in Venezuela. With Hunt’s no vote, the bill failed in a deadlock, 215-215.
The activities of a rank-and-file member often go overlooked in the House, home to 435 members when every seat is filled.
In a prominent recent example from the previous Congress, Kay Granger, a Texas Republican and senior member on the House Appropriations Committee, missed months of votes in Washington. Local reporters in Texas eventually discovered where she had been: a retirement home, where she was grappling with dementia.
