Speaker Johnson strikes deal with Rep. Luna on parental proxy voting

(The Hill) — Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has reached a deal with Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) over her push to allow new parents to vote by proxy, a development that is set to unlock the House floor after the explosive issue — and the GOP rebellions it sparked — brought the chamber to a standstill.

Under the agreement being worked out, the House would formalize “vote pairing,” two sources familiar with the matter confirmed to The Hill.

The procedure allows a member — in this case, a new parent — who must be absent for a vote to coordinate with a lawmaker voting opposite their stance who is willing to abstain from the vote, that way the new mother’s vote is canceled out.

As part of the deal, according to the sources, Luna would not force a vote on her discharge petition, which she successfully executed last month to dispatch Rep. Brittany Pettersen’s (D-Colo.) bill to the floor that seeks to allow members who give birth or lawmakers whose spouses give birth to have another member vote for them for 12 weeks.

Additionally, Johnson is still looking at increasing accessibility for young mothers in the Capitol, one of the sources said, a prospect that the Speaker revealed last week. He said he is eyeing a room for nursing mothers and potentially allowing mothers of young children to use their official funds to travel between their home districts and Washington.

Luna confirmed the agreement in a statement on the social platform X after the GOP conference call, noting that vote pairing would be allowed for members who have to miss votes for reasons other than recently giving birth, including various emergencies.

“Speaker Johnson and I have reached an agreement and are formalizing a procedure called 'live/dead pairing' — dating back to the 1800s — for the entire conference to use when unable to physically be present to vote: new parents, bereaved, emergencies,” she wrote.

“Thanks to POTUS and his support of new moms being able to vote when recovering from childbirth as well as those who worked hard to get these changes done. If we truly want a younger Congress ... these are the changes that need to happen,” she added.

Johnson announced the deal on a conference call with GOP lawmakers Sunday afternoon while also making the case for lawmakers to support the budget resolution adopted by the Senate in the wee hours of Saturday morning.

The arcane proxy voting matter had threatened to derail House GOP leadership's plans to hold a vote this week on that budget resolution, which provides a framework for President Trump’s ambitious legislative agenda on tax cuts, border and energy policy.

Luna had circumvented leadership and gathered signatures from more than 200 Democrats and 11 Republicans on a discharge petition — a rarely successful maneuver due to it requiring rebellion from members of the majority party — that would allow her to force floor consideration of the proxy voting for the new parents' resolution.

House GOP leaders — who argue that proxy voting is unconstitutional and would lead to a slippery slope — tried to kill that move. But that outraged some Republicans, and eight Republicans joined Luna in rebelling and taking down a procedural vote that blocked consideration of other unrelated matters.

The conundrum was not as simple as House GOP leaders relenting to Luna. Hard-line members of the House Freedom Caucus, who are fervently opposed to proxy voting in any form, had allegedly threatened to block floor action on other matters until Luna’s push was squashed.

It is possible for members other than Luna to call up and force action on the discharge petition — including any Democrat who signed it.

But if Republicans abide by the agreement and decline to support the resolution on the floor due to the vote-pairing compromise, the deal resolves the proxy voting impasse among Republicans.

The practice of vote pairing has been available in the House and Senate for years, though it is rarely utilized. Two lawmakers used the practice in 2003 during a vote pertaining to Medicare, according to the Congressional Research Service.

More recently, however, the practice was used in the Senate in 2018 for the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. When Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) — who supported Kavanaugh — could not make it back to Washington for the vote because his daughter was getting married, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) opted to vote “present” rather than “no.”

Updated at 4:30 p.m. EDT