While the COVID-19 outbreak is ongoing, I want to keep you informed about what has been going on in the House of Representatives this week.
Speaker Pelosi has unilaterally extended the period in which House Democrats will utilize “proxy voting”, an unconstitutional policy implemented by the Speaker that enables Democrat Leadership to vote on behalf of individual members who choose not to come to the nation’s Capitol to vote. This means dozens of Democrats in the House will continue to stay home while the rest of us make the trek here to properly represent our constituencies as required by the Constitution.
There is no reason why Members of Congress should not be able to travel to Washington and fulfill their duty to their constituents. Not one of the 50 states are currently under a stay-at-home order, and the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia have all entered Phase Two of their reopenings.
Congress has shown that it can do its job safely in person, and if our front-line health care workers and first responders can continue to show up to work, so should Members of Congress.
I’ve added my name to a lawsuit filed by Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy that challenges the constitutionality of the proxy voting scheme; it is awaiting action in federal court.
Next, House Democrats voted yesterday – in the middle of a global pandemic that has killed thousands of Americans – to approve a bill that would, in effect, stop innovative new drugs and treatments from coming to market. The Council of Economic Advisors has predicted that the Democrats’ bill would mean “as many as one hundred fewer drugs entering the U.S. market over the next decade”. We should be encouraging innovation and expediting the development of new drugs in the pipeline – not throwing up new layers of red tape and bureaucracy that discourages new innovations.
Democrats rejected a Republican amendment that would have prevented the legislation from taking effect until the Secretary of Health and Human Services, in coordination with the heads of the FDA, NIH, and NIAID, certifies that the legislation will not adversely affect the research and development of any drug or vaccine intended to treat or prevent infection with the virus that causes COVID-19.
Today, the House has begun debate on the Democrats’ massive partisan Green New Deal infrastructure wish list. The Democrats have hijacked the surface transportation bill – historically crafted and passed on a bipartisan basis – and are using it as a way to pass an enormous $1.5 trillion down payment on the Green New Deal.
Two out of every five dollars spent in the transportation section of this bill goes towards Green New Deal policies and mandates.
It does nothing to make needed infrastructure improvements to our roads, highways and bridges more cost-effective.
The bill also leaves our rural communities behind, prioritizing huge urban areas over smaller rural and suburban communities.
To be clear: this is nothing more than a messaging bill, crafted by Speaker Pelosi to appease the hard-core Left. It will go no further than the House of Representatives, and it will not do a single thing to help modernize our infrastructure or make our roads and highways safer.
All of this follows last week’s partisanship by Democrats who refused to come to the table and negotiate a bipartisan police reform bill, jamming their own measure through the House while their counterparts in the Senate refused to allow Senator Tim Scott’s bill to come to the floor for debate. Because of their partisan intransigence, efforts to improve policing and make our communities safer are effectively dead in Congress. It’s clear that Speaker Pelosi and her progressive allies in Congress have no desire to work with Republicans to get things done. Instead, every partisan bill they bring to the floor is designed to gin up their very liberal base for the election in the fall.
