Three House Democrats have died since early March, which may have helped House Republicans to pass President Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” by one vote on Thursday.
Democratic Texas Rep. Sylvester Turner died at 70 on March 4, Democratic Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva died at 77 on March 13, and Democratic Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly died at 75 on Wednesday. The recent deaths have slightly widened Republicans’ razor-thin majority in the House, expanding the seat breakdown from 220-215 in January to 220-212 as of Thursday.
The House passed its Trump-backed budget bill on Thursday morning, with members voting 215-214-1. Since no Democrats backed the bill, if just one more Democratic lawmaker was present during the vote, it is likely the bill would have failed. Republican Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie and Republican Ohio Rep. Warren Davidson were notably the sole GOP lawmakers to vote against the spending bill.
Meanwhile, Republican New York Rep. Andrew Garbarino fell asleep during the vote, Republican Arizona Rep. David Schweikert was absent from the vote and Republican Maryland Rep. Andy Harris voted present .
House Speaker Mike Johnson celebrated the lower chamber passing the spending package on Thursday in a post to X, touting the legislation as “generational” and “nation-shaping.”
The last eight members of Congress — and the last seven House members — who died in office have all been Democrats.
However, four of the seven members of Congress to die in office between 2021 and 2022 were Republicans.
The most recent Republican member of Congress to die in office was Rep. Jackie Walorski, who died due to a car accident in August 2022.
Some Democrats have expressed frustration anonymously about members of Congress being able to remain in their seats despite having ailing health, the New York Post reported on Wednesday.
“It is possible to both mourn the deaths of recently passed Democratic members of Congress and acknowledge that there is a fundamentally broken incentive structure in the party when it comes to aging,” an anonymous Democratic congressional staffer told the New York Post.
The current 119th Congress had both the third-oldest House and the third-oldest Senate in American history when it took office in January, Axios reported on Wednesday.
As of May 22, 15 House members — 12 Democrats and three Republicans — were age 80 or over.
When the current Congress took office, the median age of voting members in the House was 57.5 years, while the median age in the Senate was 64.7 years, according to a January analysis from the Pew Research Center. The median age of House Democrats and Republicans was nearly identical — 57.6 for Democrats and 57.5 for Republicans — according to the report.
The average age of the seven House Democrats who have died in office since late 2022 is 72.7 years, which is significantly higher than the median age of House Democrats but several years lower than the national life expectancy.
Meanwhile, in the Senate, the median age of all Democrats at the start of the 119th Congress was 66.0, slightly higher than the median age for Republicans, which was 64.5, according to the Pew Research Center.
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