Republicans unlock House floor with compromise quashing proxy voting for new parents

House Republicans voted Tuesday to advance a procedural rule that ends a bitter GOP fight over proxy voting for new parents after Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) reached a deal.

The rule, which tables the proxy voting for new parents push, was adopted 213-211 mostly along party lines. It also tees up consideration of bills to limit the power of federal judges and require proof of citizenship to register to vote.

The dispute over the proxy voting matter had ballooned into a full-fledged rebellion last week.

Luna had first circumvented leadership to lead a discharge petition to force a vote on Rep. Brittney Pettersen’s (D-Colo.) resolution to allow new parents to designate someone to vote on their behalf for up to 12 weeks after the birth of the child. The rarely-successful maneuver can force bills to the floor for a vote — even against the wishes of the leaders who control the House — if supporters can find 218 signatures to endorse it.

House GOP leaders, arguing that proxy voting is unconstitutional and would lead to a slippery slope, attempted to squash the discharge petition with a hardball procedural gambit. But Luna and eight other Republican rebels last week sunk that procedural vote — blocking action on other GOP priorities in the process. In response, Johnson canceled votes for the rest of the week.

Luna initially appeared ready to let the fight drag out. If leaders did nothing, they would have been forced to consider proxy voting on the House floor — and it likely had enough votes to be adopted.

But Luna came under intense pressure from fellow Republicans to drop her demand, which had threatened to derail a coming vote on the budget resolution to tee up President Trump’s ambitious legislative agenda. Amid that pressure, Johnson and Luna announced a deal over the weekend: She would allow leaders to squash a forced vote on the proxy resolution in exchange for the House formalizing “vote pairing.” 

Vote pairing allows a member who must be absent for a vote to coordinate with a lawmaker voting opposite their stance who is willing to vote present — essentially canceling out the effect of the absence — and record the intended votes in the Congressional Record. Tuesday’s vote adopted a resolution formalizing that voluntary practice.

The deal is far from the remote voting procedure that Luna had championed. But Luna said she came to the agreement because members vehemently opposed to proxy voting had allegedly threatened to defeat any procedural vote that did not squash the proxy voting push.

“There are people that would not, under any circumstance, allow the discharge petition to come to the floor,” Luna said. “So at this rate, we were concerned with protecting the discharge petition process.”

Tuesday’s procedural vote kills the discharge petition Luna had spearheaded last month. But it is not as stringent as the procedural language that Luna and other Republicans voted down last week, which would have completely blocked the resolution or any similar proxy voting resolution for the rest of the 118th Congress.

Across the aisle, Democrats bashed Johnson for upending the honored traditions surrounding the discharge petition. And they hammered the Johnson-Luna compromise, saying the “vote pairing” strategy is a pale substitute for proxy voting — one that fails to empower young parents with real influence over the fate of legislation. 

The Democratic sponsors of the legislation — Pettersen and Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) — both praised Luna for standing up to GOP leaders during the early parts of the debate. But they denounced the compromise, saying Johnson had failed young lawmakers who have started — or want to start — families during their tenure on Capitol Hill. 

“Speaker Johnson has gone to historic lengths to stifle our voices — even after we followed the rules and collected 218 signatures on our discharge petition to force a vote,” Pettersen said Tuesday in a statement. “This move is anti-woman, anti-family, and anti-parent.” 

Pettersen and Jacobs on Tuesday said they would try again to force a floor vote on their bill with another discharge petition. But the effort is almost certainly doomed, since Democrats need Republican signatures to hit the 218 threshold, and Luna isn’t signing on this time after cutting the deal with Johnson on vote pairing.

Petterson made a privileged motion on the House floor earlier on Tuesday — while holding her newborn son — to force action on the proxy voting resolution teed up by the discharge petition. It was a symbolic move that she knew would be blocked just hours later in the rule vote.

Rep. Pete Aguilar (Calif.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, dismissed vote pairing as a fig-leaf designed to allow GOP leaders to break the impasse with Luna and reopen the floor for the purposes of advancing Trump’s domestic agenda, which features sweeping tax cuts, tougher immigration laws and an expansion of oil and gas production. He said Democrats won’t participate at all. 

“This is a fake and phony effort,” Aguilar said Tuesday, shortly before the rule vote. “Democrats won't participate in this. We won't be voting for the rule. We won't be engaging in this pairing effort. 

“It's a complete show.”