Congresswoman brings 4-week-old to U.S. Capitol in order to vote on budget bill

SALT LAKE CITY — A congresswoman took to the House floor while casting a vote with her newborn just weeks after giving birth. This raises the question, should members of Congress be required to vote in person shortly after giving birth?

 

Colorado Rep. Brittany Pettersen, D-Colo., cast her vote on a budget bill while holding her 4-week-old son on Tuesday.

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise today with my newborn, Sam, who’s just four weeks old,” Pettersen said while on the House floor.

Listeners could hear Pettersen’s son make noises as she claimed she was not allowed to cast her vote remotely.

“Unfortunately, I was not given the opportunity to vote remotely after giving birth,” Pettersen said. “But I wasn’t going to let that stop me from being here to represent my constituents and vote ‘no’ on this disastrous Republican budget proposal.”

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Pettersen also posted a photo of her holding her newborn while standing alongside California Rep. Kevin Mullin, D-Calif., on her Instagram account. According to Pettersen, Mullin also came to the U.S. Capitol to vote, even after going through surgery.

“I was proud to vote alongside @repkevinmullin who flew to D.C. after three surgeries, a blood clot, an infection, and more than a week in the hospital to vote against the disastrous Republican budget proposal,” Pettersen said in the Instagram post. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Rep. Brittany Pettersen (@reppettersen)

 

Jim Curry, associate professor of political science at the University of Utah, said there is currently no requirement for lawmakers to be in Washington, D.C. when votes are taking place.

“The only requirement that’s in the Constitution that’s relevant here is that you have to have at least a majority of members physically present to conduct any business,” Curry said. “Otherwise, you would have, like, small minorities of members calling the chamber to session, doing what they wanted.”

Curry added that it’s more of an expectation in people’s eyes to have members of Congress at the U.S. Capitol to vote.

“Interestingly, if this had happened just a couple years ago, Representative Pettersen would have been able to re-vote by what’s called proxy,” Curry said. “Because during the COVID-19 pandemic, the House of Representatives enabled members to vote by proxy, which means they designated another member to vote on their behalf.”

According to Curry, the proxy rule was meant to help lawmakers feel safe and not pressured to meet during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, Curry said members started to use the proxy rule as an excuse to stay home, campaign and other reasons not to head to the U.S. Capitol.

“Proxy voting is a practice that was put in place in March of 2020, was explicitly taken out of the rules, the rules were more explicitly written to say that members had to be physically present to vote starting in January of ’23,” Curry said. “So now it’s more of a hard and fast rule, whereas before it was just sort of how business was done.”

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Currently, Curry said if lawmakers are not present during a voting session, then they don’t get a vote.

“We’re sort of back to the status quo, which is really something that’s driven out of, you know, 19th century thinking where it would’ve been hard to do something like this in some sort of remote way,” Curry said.

Another reason Congress is expected to vote in person is to create a better conversational area between lawmakers.

Now, Curry said he’d like to see the House of Representatives or the Senate create a policy in which lawmakers like Pettersen and Mullin can continue to vote when they can’t, or shouldn’t, travel.

Dave & Dujanovic can be heard weekdays from 9 a.m. to noon. and Fridays from 9 to 11 a.m.