A debate over members of Congress being given time off to take care of newborn children led to House Republican leaders canceling votes for the rest of the week on Tuesday.
The announcement came as a result of nine Republicans joining Democrats in opposing a procedural rule that would have killed a bipartisan effort to allow proxy voting for new parents.
This ended up blocking planned votes on GOP priorities to limit the power of federal judges and to require proof of citizenship to vote, two measures U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman wishes the House could’ve moved forward with.
“I don’t think it will matter much but I do want to make sure we’re moving forward with the America-first agenda and putting good bills on the floor and getting them voted out of the House and over to the Senate,” she told Cowboy State Daily.
Proxies For Parents
U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Florida, used an obscure maneuver known as a discharge petition to try and push forward her resolution to allow members who give birth or lawmakers whose spouses give birth to have another member vote for them for 12 weeks, a procedure in politics known as proxy voting.
Luna and others say young mothers and fathers need to be supported in Congress and that more young people would run for office if proxy voting was allowed.
Hageman opposes this proposal and said it would lead to a slippery slope where any number of excuses can be used to allow lawmakers to vote by proxy. Voting on bills, Hageman considers, to be the cornerstone of a congress member's job.
“I think that if you run for Congress people expect you to be here and do your job,” Hageman said. “I think it’s critically important that we be here.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, allowed proxy voting out of concerns of public safety, which was opposed by Republicans at the time.
Even though this was supposed to be limited to people who were sick or were concerned with catching the virus, Hageman believes it was abused.
In 2022, it was revealed that Rep. Mondaire Jones, D-New York, used proxy voting on more than a dozen bills while he partied on the French Riviera at a lavish wedding in Europe.
“I think you’ll see more of that if we go down the road of proxy voting,” Hageman said.
She also pointed out that congress members get multiple-week breaks from Capitol Hill multiple times a year.
“The kind of calendar that we do I think is much more amenable for people to be able to spend time with their newborns than probably the vast majority of people out there get,” she said.
Although the House meets for less than half the days in one year, this doesn’t count the time congress members spend on their own time working on bills and meeting with constituents in their home states.
Procedural Tricks
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, agrees and has said proxy voting is unconstitutional. House leadership attempted to block Luna’s efforts with a procedural rule that would have blocked all discharge petitions.
The nine House GOP rebels banded together to defeat House leadership’s effort to kill Luna’s effort on a 222-206 vote, bringing legislative activities to a halt for the week.
"I think that today is a pretty historical day for the entire conference and showing that, yeah, the body has decided that parents deserve a voice in Washington and also to the importance of female members having a vote in Washington D.C.," Luna told reporters after the vote.
Johnson told reporters after that the rule being struck down restricts further action on the floor for the week. Leadership adjourned the House until next Monday.
Hageman said she doesn’t want to go after the nine Republicans who voted against the rest of the party.
“They had their own reasons for doing what they did,” she said. “I respect their decision-making process, what they think is the right thing to do. I’m not going to criticize fellow members for doing whatever they think is right.”
The thwarted rule means the House can’t take votes as planned on the No Rogue Rulings Act. That bill would limit the power of federal judges to impose nationwide injunctions like those that have blocked Trump administration actions. Sen. Cynthia Lummis has co-sponsored a Senate version of this bill.
“That was an important bill,” Hageman said.
It also delays a vote on the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, legislation Secretary of State Chuck Gray has supported that would require proof of citizenship in federal elections in order to register to vote.
Hageman doesn’t believe the future of these two bills will be thwarted by the delay and anticipates both to come back up in the House next week.
Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.
