Washington, DC – US representative Ryan Mackenzie believes that legislators who are new parents should be able to vote by a representative in Congress to let them stay at home to take care of newborns.
Republican Lehigh Valley joined eight other Republicans and all Democrats on Tuesday voting against the middle that would block the chance of voting on such a resolution. The voting block has been overcome 222-206.
Mackenzie, who has almost a 1-year-old son, said that his work in Pennsylvania Statehouse, creating a mother’s mortality committee, helped him inform him about what new mothers and parents are going through.
“For me I would like to see voting on the vote of the proxy,” Mackenzie said shortly after the vote.
Two new mothers – republican representative Anna Paulina Luna from Florida and democratic rep. Brittany Pettersen from Colorado – sponsored the rules. Pettersen appeared on the floor at home for a speech on Tuesday with her baby, alone in her arms and a cloth on her shoulder.
“It is unfathomable that in 2025 we did not modernize the congress,” said Pettersen. “We ask you to still stand with us.”
Republicans, who oppose this Middle Affairs, argued that legislators were elected personally, and the Marshal of the House Mike Johnson specially headed against the voting of proxies at the same time that President Donald Trump implemented a policy of returning to work for federal employees.
But Mackenzie said that he did not agree with this opinion when it comes to new parents.
“I think this is a really unique circumstance when someone has a child. Often you can’t plan the date of such a thing and I think we should be more favorable,” he said. “And also with the technology we have, we know that you can vote in this way and you can vote according to proxy.”
The resolution would allow a proxy to vote – if absent legislators can instruct those present to vote on their behalf – for a period of up to 12 weeks for legislators who gave birth, or those who are pregnant and cannot safely travel to the congress. The spouses of new parents would also receive a 12-week representative. New parents serving in the Congress would appoint another member of the Congress as a representative to vote on their behalf.
Republicans forbade the representative of the representative after taking control of the Chamber in 2023.
The break in GOP Ranks prompted Johnson to cancel the votes for the rest of the week.
GOP has a narrow majority at home that Johnson has largely managed to maintain. But the extremely aggressive movement of Johnson in order to move voting over a resolution, which had a lot of bilateral support, was occasional and caused invoice supporters.
US representative Dan Meuser (R., Luzerne) initially signed this measure, but said that he was now opposite and voted with Johnson and House Republicans, hoping to kill voting on Tuesday.
Meuser said that he supported new mothers by proxy, but he did not realize that the bill also allowed the spouses 12 weeks of voting for a representative.
“It seems to me that his spouse, I think it’s too long,” said Meuser. “It seemed that it was really excessive.”
