A weekslong dustup over proxy voting for new parents in the House came to an end Tuesday despite a last-ditch effort from one of its chief proponents.
“Congress is stuck doing things the way that we did hundreds of years ago, and it’s time that we move it to the 21st century,” Rep. Brittany Pettersen said from the House floor with her 10-week-old son, Sam, in her arms.
The Colorado Democrat has led the charge to allow proxy voting for up to 12 weeks after birth, alongside Florida Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna. It started to fizzle over the weekend after Luna announced a deal with Speaker Mike Johnson to abandon a discharge petition that would have forced a floor vote on the issue.
In a largely symbolic move, Pettersen gave notice of her intent to keep the discharge effort alive. But the House then voted to quash it by agreeing to a rule on unrelated legislation, mainly along party lines. That rule tabled the proxy discharge motion and revived an alternate tactic known as “vote pairing.”
“Let’s be clear, the changes agreed upon by the speaker are not a win for us. They do not address the challenges that we’ve worked so hard to overcome,” Pettersen said from the floor. “And the speaker turned his back on moms and dads in Congress and working families across the country.”
Pettersen and other Democrats have vowed to continue to fight for parental proxy voting, which would allow members to tap a colleague to vote on their behalf after the birth of a child. But at least for the moment, Luna’s deal with Johnson ends an intraparty squabble between the proxy proponents, the House Freedom Caucus and GOP leadership.
In place of proxy voting, Luna and Johnson agreed to reinstate an archaic process allowing lawmakers to seek out parings with colleagues who would otherwise have voted opposite them. Such pairings essentially cancel out the missed votes of absent members. The “pairing” agreement would be open to other House members, not just new parents, and it was adopted through the unrelated rule using a tactic known as “deem and pass.”
“Obviously it’s not what we initially had wanted, but it’s a step forward in the right direction. I think it’s a good solve for now,” Luna said Tuesday ahead of the vote.
“Does it fully address the issue? No. Does it make a significant step forward? Yes,” said New York Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, an early supporter of Pettersen’s proxy voting resolution.
With the discharge petition tabled, proponents would need to start again from square one and file a new petition. California Democratic Rep. Sara Jacobs, a co-sponsor on Pettersen’s resolution, on Tuesday said she wasn’t sure they’d still be able to get the 218 signatures necessary to force a vote.
Lawler, for one, said he likely wouldn’t sign another discharge petition on the issue. “It’s been addressed to the best that we’re going to be able to address it in this Congress,” he said.
And supporters would likely face the same tenacious opposition from House Republican leadership.
Johnson has continued to rail against proxy voting, the controversial pandemic-era policy that was abused by members from both parties, as unconstitutional — although he did use the practice himself at the time. Opponents also argued that even a narrow carve-out for parents could have a gateway effect, leading to expanded forms of proxy voting and abuse.
According to Luna, members of the Freedom Caucus, to which she once belonged, threatened to shut down the floor if Johnson allowed the discharge motion to be considered. Luna renounced her membership in the far-right caucus over the ordeal.
Johnson last week tried to stamp out the effort by introducing language to a rule that would have gone even further and blocked subsequent attempts to bring up the parental proxy question. But nine Republicans, including Luna, joined all Democrats to vote down the rule on the floor, scuttling consideration of a series of conservative proposals that were attached and setting off an intraparty blame game.
Johnson accused Luna and the cadre of Republicans who voted against the rule of effectively shutting down business in the House. He immediately canceled votes for the rest of that week.
But Luna has repeatedly pointed out that one of the bills, a conservative election bill dubbed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, was already teed up as a Republican legislative priority and never needed to go through the Rules Committee.
“I think the bigger problem here is that there was a national campaign to basically lie about what actually happened last week,” Luna said Monday. “I clearly was not responsible for shutting down the floor. We could’ve voted on the SAVE Act. That was nonsense.”
Nina Heller contributed to this report.
The post House rejects proxy voting for new parents, chooses ‘pairing’ instead appeared first on Roll Call.
