People wouldn’t blame House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for trying to find some breathing room in his microscopic majority. Last week, Americans saw how seriously Republicans are taking their whisper-thin margins when President Trump pulled his nomination for Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), surprising everyone by sending her back to Congress to provide some much-needed GOP backup. But as much sleep as Johnson has lost trying to count noses on key votes, there’s one gimmick he refuses to consider.

When Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was in Johnson’s shoes — clinging to the slimmest majority in a generation — she got incredibly creative to arrive at the numbers she needed on any given bill. Turns out, having control of Congress when a global pandemic swept through the country was unusually kind to the Democratic Party’s agenda. Recognizing that she couldn’t afford to lose a single vote — especially on the extreme legislation that her more moderate members opposed, Pelosi instituted a rule that let members vote from somewhere other than the House floor. And while the policy was supposed to be a temporary measure in the early months of COVID, the Democratic leaders managed to extend it well beyond the point of rationality. 

As The New York Times chronicled, Pelosi’s “proxy voting” was exploited for months as members decided it was “too dangerous” to go to Washington (but perfectly fine to attend packed-out local political fundraisers). “It’s a huge scandal,” Republican Mike Gallagher (Wis.) argued at the time. “Members have been signing their names to a straight-up lie.” “It indulges the worst impulses of the modern congressman,” he insisted, “which is to spend all their time flying around the country, raising money, and avoiding all the nuts and bolts of legislative work.”

When Pelosi first announced a proxy voting system back in May 2020, the idea was so controversial that more than 160 Republicans sued. “Our founders intended that Congress convene and deliberate,” the GOP argued. “The Constitution requires a majority of members be present to constitute a quorum to conduct business.” After all, they argued, since the first session of Congress in 1789 through 2020, members have had to be present to vote. This current ruse, conservatives fumed, is nothing but “heavy-handed partisan maneuvering.”

Two years later, with the public health threat largely behind us, the practice made even less sense. And yet, no-show voting was such a powerful tool for the Left that Democrats were reluctant to let it go. “Despite a narrow, ten-member majority in the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been able to control her caucus in part because members who couldn’t make it to Washington could still vote,” Time Magazine pointed out.

When Johnson’s predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, won the gavel, conservatives did away with the Democrats’ racket, insisting that members again be present on the House floor to vote. But now, much to some people’s surprise, the concept is making the rounds again — this time in Republican circles. 

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) is pressing the issue in what’s been described as a “narrower” version of proxy voting that would only apply to new parents in Congress. Against most Republicans’ wishes, she took the unusual step of forcing the bill through a discharge petition, a weapon typically used by the minority party. Under her proposal, a congressman or woman could designate a fellow member to vote on their behalf for up to 12 weeks while they’re home with a new baby. And while it sounds like a reasonable concept at face value, the implications, conservatives warn, could be far more dangerous than Luna or others realize. 

“It’s not like all 435 members are gonna run out and get pregnant, then all of a sudden you’re gonna have a massive vote by proxy,” Luna argued. “That’s simply not possible, also too, not the case.” But Johnson, who’s a devoted family man, still cautions that the idea is a bridge too far. “It sounds good on the surface,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins agreed on Saturday’s “This Week on the Hill,” but where do you draw the line? 

“It’s very problematic,” the speaker wanted people to know. “And look, I’ve talked with Anna about this at great length, and she’s also a dear friend. … [H]er motives are pure,” Johnson said. “… She’s in her 20s, she’s a young mom. And she had a baby recently, and she had to miss some votes. And so, she wants to change the rules [to] say any young family that has a baby, that that member of Congress, either the wife or the husband, doesn’t have to show up for 12 weeks. And I just think it’s a real problem.”

The reality is, he continued, “We sympathize with all our colleagues, many of whom face circumstances that prevent them from being present in Congress. But proxy voting raises serious constitutional questions that change more than two and a half centuries of tradition. It abuses our system,” Johnson emphasized, “and it creates a slippery slope toward more and more members casting votes remotely. Because if we could change the rules for this with a discharge petition — which is really a tool of the minority party, not the majority — then all bets are off. You’ll have other people who will bring discharge petitions for a number of other things,” the speaker explained, “and it will just become totally chaotic. So I hope that that doesn’t pass.”

On Monday, Luna sent a fiery letter to the House Freedom Caucus, resigning from the group for their lack of support for her petition. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who was an ardent critic of Pelosi’s proxy voting four years ago, responded, posting, “Respectfully to my friend — this (unconstitutional) rule would ultimately NOT be limited to moms. Cancer patients, dads, & worst of all, people who lazily abuse it (eg, voting from boats). She leaves out [that] her discharge allows no amendments! We should show up to work/vote.”

In response to the criticism, the speaker pointed out, “Look, I’m a father. I’m pro-family. [But] here’s the problem. If you create a proxy vote opportunity just for young parents, mothers and, the fathers in those situations, then where is the limiting principle?”

At the end of the day, Johnson reiterated to Perkins, “This is a Nancy Pelosi invention. Proxy voting had never been allowed in Congress until Nancy got the gavel. And we went to court to stop it. In fact,” the speaker reminded listeners, “I was a plaintiff in the lawsuit. We went and took the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to try to declare proxy voting to be unconstitutional. The problem is … the court punted, and they said they didn’t [want] to address it. … They thought it would be a separation of powers problem if the court stepped in and told us how to do our business. So … that really underscores the importance of us handling this on our own.”

Of course, the interesting piece of this internal feud is that Johnson, of all people, stood to benefit from a proxy system in a chamber where he’s hanging on to the majority with his fingernails. Instead, he took the ethical path, refusing to make votes easier for his party just because the shoe was on the other foot. As FRC’s Quena Gonzalez told The Washington Stand, “The speaker put constitutional principle above political gain. That’s rare in Washington. It doesn’t earn you many friends,” he admitted, but in the long run, “it will earn him continued respect from his colleagues and opponents.”