With the latest House rules package instituted at the beginning of January, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has finally won his battle against proxy voting. The result could haunt him at the worst possible time.
In 2020, the Democratic-controlled House voted on party lines to allow representatives to vote on behalf of their colleagues as a result of the COVID-19 public health crisis.
The result? Hundreds of representatives, both Republicans and Democrats, spent the 116th and 117th sessions of Congress voting for countless pieces of legislation while barely spending time in the nation's Capitol. An Insider analysis from April 2022, for example, found two Democrat representatives that showed up to vote in person less than 7% of the time since proxy voting was instituted.
McCarthy, and much of his caucus, was vehemently opposed. With newfound control of the House, one of McCarthy's first moves was to eliminate proxy voting when finalizing the House rules package. But this may have been a mistake.
The Republican Party holds just a very slim majority over Democrats in the House of Representatives — 222 Republicans to 212 Democrats — and needs 218 votes to pass any pieces of legislation.
At a time when a Speaker would ideally like to have the chance to guarantee the votes and backing of absent members, he's given away one of the best tools a Speaker had to nail down votes of the ill, the absent, the traveling, the unreliable, and those distracted by other ambitions. It could end up costing him.
Opposition
McCarthy, the Republican leader, has been a vocal opponent of proxy voting since its introduction, going as far as suing then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the sergeant-at-arms, and House clerk in an attempt to halt proxy voting from taking place.
"Democrats are creating a precedent for further injustice," McCarthy said. "If their changes are acceptable, what stops the majority from creating a 'House Rule' that stipulates the minority party's votes only count for half of the majority party's?"
Joined by 20 other GOP representatives, the lawsuit claimed the US Constitution only allowed for in-person voting and that proxy voting was unconstitutional. The suit ultimately failed — a US appeals court ruled that the federal courts don't have jurisdiction to alter House rules, a decision that was later upheld by a federal district court.
Republicans are not a unified party
Additionally, the Republican conference at the moment has not proven to operate as one unit, unlike House Democrats.
These issues came to a head during McCarthy's prolonged vote to become House speaker, which took several days and 15 total votes for him to finally reach the 218-vote threshold. By contrast, Democrats were in alignment from the very first vote as to who to elect as House minority leader: Rep. Hakeem Jeffries.
The fact that McCarthy's speakership vote — which members had months of time to prepare for — had countless holdouts from different GOP members and caucuses shows just how tenuous and difficult it will be for McCarthy to get key legislation passed, and that was with every member present in Washington, DC.
Members can't be in DC for all sorts of normal reasons
With 435 representatives in the House, it's routine for members to fall ill, become injured, or need surgery. Proxy voting rules allowed members to legislate from afar in that event. But now, no matter what happens to a lawmaker, they'll be unable to vote on legislation without being in person at the Capitol.
With this in mind, it appears that it'll be much more difficult for McCarthy to push legislation through the House without proxy voting, as he can't afford many holdouts. McCarthy's already down one GOP representative: Rep. Greg Steube's office recently announced that the Florida congressman fell 25 feet off of a ladder while cutting tree limbs.
—Congressman Greg Steube (@RepGregSteube) January 24, 2023
