The Proxy Voting Theater

Congressional mothers should, if they require childcare, do what mothers in the private sector do: get a baby sitter.

House Republicans devolved into another daytime soap opera over whether or not female congressional members can work from home, i.e. proxy voting. I guess they were inspired by Kay Granger.

Republican Anna Paulina Luna and Democrat Brittany Pettersen — who brought her baby everywhere in the Capitol to prove that she’s oppressed and can’t bring her baby everywhere — demanded that Speaker Mike Johnson change the House rules to allow them to work from home because they are the first women in Congress to ever have kids. They’re not, but you wouldn’t know it from the rhetoric over the past 24 hours. The mutual respect, Luna declares, is “shattered.” She quit the Freedom Caucus. Johnson had his own tantrum in response and shut down the House. Another week of no movement on voters’s agenda.

Ignored is that no other Republican woman supported this move either by word or vote, because they remember Kay Granger. Also because it’s bonkers.

Voters vote for lawmakers to show up. Collaboration is lost when members don’t convene on the floor to hammer out ideas in person. Integrity is lost when members can shirk their duties and work from home. It’s odd to rail against mail-in voting and ballot drop-off boxes only to turn around and demand the same for something as important as Congressional responsibilities.

Proxy voting is unconstitutional. Article 1 Section 5 outlines the requirements for a quorum to run the House’s business. Breaking the rule is abusive and the rule will never again be observed. That’s the position that Republicans used to hold, anyway.

There is no conservative argument for proxy voting to accommodate birth. There is no right to serve in Congress. It’s a privilege and is milked for perks. Serving in Congress isn't a job you take to pay the bills. Smart women plan their families around their professional interests. I didn’t fully pursue a professional career in broadcasting until I was finished having children. If my husband and I needed assistance after, our families helped.

Congressional mothers should, if they require childcare, do what mothers in the private sector do: get a baby sitter. It’s even easier for them as they have access to a state-of-the-art, taxpayer-funded, $12 million daycare facility. And unlike mothers in the private sector, Congressional mothers don’t have an issue of paying for it.

No one forced Luna and Pettersen to campaign for these jobs — these elite, well-paying jobs that most members leave having curiously made triple their salaries. They’re demanding inequality, unequal, special treatment, perks that no mother in Congress is requesting and no mother in the private sector would receive.

Part of being a grown, adult woman is making smart choices, prioritizing those choices, and realizing that life oftentimes does not give you perfect choices. By the time they reach adulthood, women should understand that they have to structure their lives to this reality. No one is stopping a woman from a career or from being a mother, but the consequence of poor planning doesn’t oblige voters to make up for the shortfall of her timing. When you choose to run for public office, voters become the priority.

Some have used this as a launchpad to argue for FDR-lite social welfare by demanding that businesses take directions from the government on how, who, and when to hire and what, or when, to offer perks. It’s a socialist pitch wrapped in the veneer of “pro-family,” but it betrays the spirit of the Constitution by insisting that government solve a problem that can only be remedied by society.

If you can’t take care of your family without demanding that everyone else pitch in or assume some of the burden, rethink whether or not serving in elected office is one of those aforementioned smart choices.

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