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Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Photo:
Rod Lamkey/Zuma Press
The Covid-19 pandemic spawned many “emergency” measures that Democrats want to make permanent. One of the most shameless is proxy voting in the House, which lets quarantined or vulnerable lawmakers log ayes and nays remotely. By now this has become an excuse for Members of the House to skip town for any reason.
To designate a proxy, lawmakers file a letter with the House clerk that typically includes this unambiguous line: “I am unable to physically attend proceedings in the House Chamber due to the ongoing public health emergency.” It sounds almost like a doctor’s note for illness.
Yet it’s become more like the start of “
Ferris Bueller’s
Day Off,” when Bueller skips school by faking clammy hands. The number of proxy votes is about 50% higher on “fly-out days” near the end of the week, according to Roll Call. Occasionally it makes news that some Member of the House voted by proxy, ostensibly due to Covid, while his election campaign was tweeting pictures of him kissing babies. What’s harder to know is who votes remotely because D.C. is hot in the summer and it’s such a long flight.
When the final version of the Inflation Reduction Act passed the House in August, Rep.
Cindy Axne,
an Iowa Democrat, voted remotely. Reporters spotted Ms. Axne around the same time in her son’s Instagram photo of their family vacation in France. She told an Iowa TV station that the House wasn’t supposed to be in session that week: “I had a trip planned for eight months, and paid for.” OK, but then don’t sign a proxy letter you know is false.
It’s no defense to say everyone is doing it, although that’s close to the truth. The Inflation Reduction Act passed 220-207, with 158 proxy votes. This explains Speaker
Nancy Pelosi’s
interest. Her majority is tiny. Absences are less of a headache if she doesn’t have to get anyone to the floor. Perhaps it’ll help her bully through Democratic bills in the lame-duck session.
In a Sept. 23 letter, Mrs. Pelosi extended the proxy policy through Nov. 10, saying that “a public health emergency is in effect.” That was a week and a half after the House Sergeant at Arms further relaxed the chamber’s Covid protocols. According to the Hill newspaper, former members of the House are now permitted to “conduct tours throughout the Capitol, though groups cannot exceed 50 people.”
Proxy voters are getting used to the convenience. Rep.
Don Bacon,
a Nebraska Republican, was unapologetic about voting remotely while campaigning. “I have to cancel 15 events for one vote?” he told Axios. “I’m just in a mode where you can’t just move the schedule around.”
Rep.
Tim Ryan
has voted by proxy about 60% of the time since winning Ohio’s Democratic Senate nomination, Roll Call says. “We’ve got a lot of responsibilities in our Congressional districts, a lot of responsibilities here. Kids get sick, family issues,” he argued. “You should still be able to cast your vote. It’s 2022. It’s not 1800.”
Millions of Americans know all about “family issues” and still make it to work. Members of Congress spend only three or four days a week in Washington as it is. The least they can do is be there in person to vote now that the pandemic emergency is over. Republicans are promising to end proxy voting next year if they win the majority, and it’s a promise worth keeping.
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