Friday’s House of Representatives vote to approve the $700 billion Inflation Reduction Act. This bill would not lower inflation. 158 of the lawmakers voted proxy.
The 158 legislators voted by proxy in spite of controversy. However, the Senate still requires that its members vote in person.
House members can vote by proxy. This means that one member of a House can vote for an absent member. This voting method was introduced in 2020 by the coronavirus pandemic.
Instead of the House’s proxy voting ability being withdrawn as the coronavirus epidemic has improved in the country, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, has extended it multiple time, citing the “public safety emergency.”
According to the website of the Clerk of House:
The Office of the Clerk verifies and makes available letters to designate, change, or revoke remote voting via proxy in accordance with House Resolution 8. Only Members who have been designated as proxy may cast votes for other members after they have received an exact instruction regarding each vote.
Breitbart News reported that the Clerk had received 190 proxy letters from members on Friday, before the final votes. The night before, 175 letters were submitted. These numbers fluctuated throughout the night as members submitted new proxy letters and/or terminated their old ones.
This may partly be due to the fact that members had an active proxy vote letter before it was needed, but kept active in case members wanted to leave town.
A member with an active proxy letter does NOT mean that they will not vote in person. The Clerk received the majority of these letters in the last few weeks because members are on vacation.
CNN reported on Friday that Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R), was at the Capitol with members of the House Republican Intel Committee for a news conference at 9:00 am. He was already at Dulles airport by noon.
Republicans can’t stop Democrats from passing this bill because it uses budgetary reconciliation. However, a senior House Republican staffer said that Democrats plan to “own” the bill and highlight its negative effects.
The legislation would:
Medicare can negotiate the drug price
For $64 billion, extend the Obamacare subsidies.
Reduce deficit by $300 billion
While America is in a recession, taxes are being increased
Increase funding for IRS by $80billion, which would allow it to be larger than the Pentagon State Department FBI and Border Patrol.
For the federal government, create hundreds of billions in green energy slush money to distribute
Budget gimmicks, and false offsets are used to hide the bill’s true cost.
Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader (R-CA), has stated numerous times that he would eliminate proxy voting if Republicans win the House in January. He also stated in March, that “proxy voting”, as it is commonly known, would be better called “convenience voting”, since both parties have used it that way, other than to prevent a health crisis.
Rep. Chip Roy (R.TX), who used the $700 Billion “Inflation Reduction Act” as an example, said to Breitbar News that it was “absurd that lazy Democrats and Republicans will use the “bullshit proxy voting rule on “garbage Inflation Reduction Act” — which doesn’t help inflation — rather than following the Constitution and turning up in person to vote.
