Rep. Anna Paulina Luna said Sunday that she and House Speaker Mike Johnson have reached an agreement on a voting accommodation for new parents that will avoid bringing back proxy voting.
The agreement is for a vote-pairing arrangement that will allow an absent lawmaker to pair up with a House member who would be voting the opposite way of them.
The present member of the pair would withdraw their vote, so it is not counted, effectively offsetting the absent members’ vote. In the process, the present member would announce the pair arrangement and how each member should be recorded for the Congressional Record.
Ms. Luna, Florida Republican, announced the new arrangement on social media and said it will extend not just to new parents but other lawmakers who have valid emergency reasons for being absent.
“Speaker Johnson and I have reached an agreement and are formalizing a procedure called ’live/dead pairing’ — dating back to the 1800s — for the entire conference to use when unable to physically be present to vote: new parents, bereaved, emergencies,” she said.
The Washington Times reached out to the speaker’s office for comment.
The agreement involves Ms. Luna dropping her effort to force a vote on a House rule change letting new mothers or fathers vote by proxy for up to 12 weeks after the birth of a child. The measure also would have allowed pregnant mothers whose doctors advised them against travel to begin that 12-week proxy voting period before the child’s birth.
Mr. Johnson, Louisiana Republican, opposes bringing back proxy voting, which Democrats had instituted during the pandemic and Republicans later repealed.
“Democrats tried proxy voting before and it was terribly abused. We cannot open that Pandora’s box again,” the speaker posted Friday on social media.
That contradicted a Thursday night post from Ms. Luna, who said she and the speaker “discussed limiting the vote to just new moms who cannot physically travel in event of emergency, etc.”
The speaker adjourned the chamber early last week after Ms. Luna, eight other Republicans and all Democrats voted down his procedural effort to block a vote on her proxy voting proposal for new parents.
Ms. Luna had gathered the required 218 signatures on a discharge petition needed to force a vote and could have done so last week had the chamber remained in session.
The dispute between Mr. Johnson and Ms. Luna became even more complicated on Thursday after President Trump said he spoke with her and agreed with her aim.
“It’s a little controversial. I don’t know why it’s controversial,” the president said. “I’m going to let the speaker make the decision, but I like the idea of being able to, if you’re having a baby I think you should be able to call in and vote.”
Notably, proxy voting is not a system under which members call in to vote from afar. Rather, it lets lawmakers who must take a leave of absence designate another member to vote on their behalf.
Mr. Johnson and many other Republicans believe proxy voting is unconstitutional.
The speaker said in his social media post on Friday that Mr. Trump deferred to him on resolving the issue, quoting the president, “Mike, you have my proxy on proxy voting.”
“America is grateful to have a President who appreciates and understands the complexity of legislative branch issues and governing with a razor-thin House majority,” Mr. Johnson posted.
Ms. Luna credited Mr. Trump in her Sunday post announcing the new agreement.
“Thanks to POTUS and his support of new moms being able to vote when recovering from child birth, as well as those who worked hard to get these changes done,” she said. “If we truly want a pro-family Congress, these are the changes that need to happen.”
Ms. Luna lamented the “disinformation surrounding why the floor was shut down” last week.
“Either way I’m glad to see this resolved,” she said.
The speaker had blamed Ms. Luna and the other Republicans who voted to block his effort to turn off her discharge petition for stalling the House’s agenda for that week because the provision was tucked into the rule setting up debate for unrelated legislation.
The rule was set up to bring several bills to the floor, including top GOP priorities, like legislation requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote and a bill to limit district judges from imposing nationwide injunctions like the ones that have halted Mr. Trump’s executive actions.
“Nothing else can proceed for a vote without passing a new rule first, and many Republicans refuse to do so until we stop the proxy initiative,” Mr. Johnson said in a Wednesday social media post explaining why he sent the House home for the week.
