It turns out that the biggest support of Democrats who will vote "no" on health reform is not the health insurance industry, but the Democratic Party itself. Just take a look through the independent expenditure archive at Swing State Project, and compare them to David Dayen's latest whip count.
From 2006-2008, the DCCC made $14,421,187 in independent expenditures on behalf of elven members of the House of Representatives who are currently either "hard no" votes, or confirmed Stupak bloc, on the health reform bill. Those eleven members of Congress are Adler (NJ-03), Arcuri (NY-24), Bright (AL-02), Childers (MS-01), Donnelly (IN-02), Driehaus (OH-01), Griffith (AL-05), Kissell (NC-08), Kratovil (MD-01), Minnick (ID-01), and Shuler (NC-11).
Additionally, the DCCC spent $21,328,946 on eleven members who are currently undecided: Altmire (PA-04), Carney (PA-10), Dahlkemper (PA-03), Ellsworth (IN-08), Kosmas (FL-24), Hill (IN-09), Kanjorksi (PA-11), Mitchell (AZ-05), Perriello (VA-05), Space (OH-18) and Teague (NM-02).
The DCCC also spent a pile of money on the special elections featuring Travis Childers, Bill Foster, Scott Murphy and Bill Owens in 2008-2009, although I could not find exact figures on how much they spent. A safe assumption is that another $10,000,000 was spent in those campaigns, upping the overall total to around $45,000,000 on Democrats who are opposed, or undecided, on the health reform bill.
Furthermore, the DCCC spent $6,703,898 on just Dahlkemper, Donnelly, Driehaus and Ellsworth, all of whom are either Stupak bloc or "Stupak curious."
And to top it off, the DCCC is still actively raising money for nine "no" votes, (Adler, Arcuri, Bright, Childers, Driehuas, Kratovil, McMahon, Minnick, and Nye) along with a slew of undecideds (Carney, Dahlkemper, Foster, Hill, Kosmas, Mitchell, Scott Murphy, Owens, Perriello, Space and Teague).
The DCCC is the easily the largest source of funds for the Democrats who are holding up the health reform bill. And, they show no signs of turning off the spigot for 2010.
There is a lot of buzz in the blogosphere about how Progressives in Congress are bad negotiators. I'd have to say that serving as the Democratic Party serving as the primary source of funding source for the opposition to its legislative agenda takes bad negotiation up a couple orders of magnitude.
Oh yeah--and two committee chairs, Peterson and Skelton, oppose the health reform bill, too. Sweet.
Update: Perriello is now a "yes" vote. So, the "undecided" numbers go down by $720,548.
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