Republican Reps. Chip Roy of Texas and Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin called out fellow members of Congress who use proxy voting to attend events while claiming to be afraid of catching COVID-19.
First introduced in May 2020, proxy voting allows representatives to designate a colleague to cast votes for them. House Republicans led by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Roy filed a lawsuit against the practice, which members of both parties often use, but the Supreme Court ruled against them in January….
In order for members to designate a proxy, they must sign a form declaring that they are “unable to physically attend proceedings in the House Chamber due to the ongoing public health emergency.”
However, Gallagher noted, “we’ve all heard the anecdotes of people going to fundraisers, Democrats and Republicans by the way. I’m not saying only the other side has abused this.”
“The overwhelming majority of members proxy voting are lying when they sign this piece of paper,” he said. “Let me prove this to you mathematically why this is a massive lie. The average number of proxy votes on a normal day of Congress, a full day like today, is about 68 if you crunch the numbers. Magically, on fly-in and fly-out days, those numbers skyrocket to around 100. So what happened? Are people getting COVID-19 on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, but not Wednesdays?”
“It’s about birthdays, it’s about graduation parties, it’s about the birth of children, it’s about climate change, it’s about strokes,” Gallagher continued. “Stop lying.”
Read more at the Daily Caller.