Speaker Mike Johnson’s clash with a fellow Republican over allowing proxy voting for new parents in the House is set to play out on the floor Tuesday.
The House Rules Committee approved a measure that would effectively kill Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s proxy-voting effort, which was set to come to the floor for a vote this week under a discharge petition.
The Rules measure, which was advanced out of the panel Tuesday morning on a party-line 9-4 vote, includes language tabling Luna’s legislation and blocking consideration of any future legislation that is “substantially the same.”
GOP leadership — at the urging of conservative hard-liners — has lined up against the proxy-voting proposal, which Johnson has called unconstitutional. House Republicans railed against proxy voting when it was employed on a large scale by the Democratic majority during the Covid pandemic from 2020 through 2022, filing an unsuccessful lawsuit challenging its legitimacy.
“We’re not going to let it come up on the floor,” Johnson said Tuesday in a brief interview. He later told House Republicans in a closed-door conference meeting today that his plan would allow for “more time” to discuss the matter, according to three people granted anonymity to describe the private remarks.
For Johnson’s plan to succeed, House Republicans will have to stay almost entirely united on a planned midday vote to approve the Rules measure. Johnson and his team spoke with Luna and other Republicans this morning about the way forward.
Luna said Monday she would vote no if the language was included. If she can rally opposition among the 11 other Republicans who supported the discharge petition, she could potentially derail the midday vote — spelling trouble not only for Johnson’s bid to spike her initiative but also for the House GOP’s floor plans this week.