This past week, Congress the House of Representatives have been arguing as to whether or not new parents are able to “proxy vote” while they’re out on their 12 weeks of parental leave. These same 12 weeks of parental leave are not mandated by federal law to working people, and less than half of the states have laws giving working people this right. Also of note, the National Defense Authorization Act (which is where, I guess, employment benefits for legislative branch employees get sorted out) at the end of 2019 seems to be the first time that legislative branch employees received any paid parental leave, which seems wild to me that we had to get to the 21st century for this country to have those benefits for employees at that level of the federal government. For comparison, every woman in North Korea (regardless of where she works) has had paid maternity leave since 1986, and currently can claim 240 days of that paid leave. DPRK dads are out of luck, unfortunately. Icelandic dads get six months of paid paternity leave, again - regardless of where they work.

Back on topic - the showdown in the House is being captained by Republican Representative Anna Luna and Democratic Representative Brittany Pettersen against Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson.

From AP: Speaker Johnson suffers a defeat in his push to block parents in the U.S. House from proxy voting:

“If we don’t do the right thing now, it’ll never be done,” said Luna, who gave birth to her son in 2023.
Pettersen, with a burp cloth over her shoulder and 4-month-old son Sam in her arms, stood on the House floor and pleaded with colleagues to turn back the GOP leadership’s effort to stop their resolution.
“It is unfathomable that in 2025 we have not modernized Congress,” she said. “We’re asking you to continue to stand with us.”

I’m in agreement with this. I’m personally not sure why Congress needs to be in the same room to do absolutely anything in the 21st century. Conversations, decisions, and information dissemination can be done from anywhere in the world. I have a job that I can do the overwhelming majority of it from anywhere with a serviceable Internet connection - what’s holding back Congress from loosening up some of this to accommodate parents?

From same article linked above:

“Look, I’m a father, I’m pro-family,” the Republican speaker said late last month. But “I believe it violates more than two centuries of tradition and institution. And I think that it opens a Pandora’s box, where ultimately, maybe no one is here.”

I’m hard-pressed to imagine any argument against change with less value than “we’ve always done it this way”. Johnson’s argument here is worth nothing to me. But he has another one: it’s unconstitutional.

From The Hill: Johnson weighs options after ‘stubborn’ Luna forces vote on ‘unconstitutional’ parental proxy voting:

“I’m afraid the whole thing is unconstitutional,” Johnson said in the Capitol. “I’ve tried to discuss this with Anna, and she’s pretty stubborn about it, so we’ll see what happens. But I’m not in favor of it. I filed a brief to the United States Supreme Court explaining that proxy voting is clearly unconstitutional so, you know, I have a real concern about it.”

I tried to hunt down that brief or any journalism that includes what precisely makes this “unconstitutional”. Closest I got was a couple of pieces that seemed to make it sound like that because it’s not outlined in the Constitution that Congress can’t do it - which is also another bad argument. The United States does plenty of things that are not outlined within the Constitution.

But I do think that Johnson’s position does have some merit. If I am to believe that there are elected officials who are representing me - I don’t want someone who isn’t that person to have “my” representatives power within the legislature. However, I don’t think that there has ever in my life been an elected official at city, state, or federal level that has represented my interests or my political ideals, other than on rare occasions. Furthermore, to be realistic, if my Republican representative handed his vote to another Republican, or should that man lose his seat to a Democrat and that representative hand their vote to another Democrat - they’re still very likely to vote along party lines. I don’t think anything would change.

A Congress that will not make any concessions for its own duly elected members to be new parents is just one of many examples of how these people are out of touch with working Americans. Not extending this to new mothers shows how sexist Congress is. Not extending this to new fathers shows how entrenched their out-of-date patriarchal ideals are.

As someone who is told that he has a representative in the federal government, I want that representative to represent me. Expecting that representative to just not have any new kids in their family while they’re in Congress is unrealistic and runs afoul of anyone’s understanding of the concept of “liberty”. Furthermore, the rights to take paid parental leave that I feel every single American should be entitled to should also be extended to elected officials. It would be unreasonable of me to expect these officials to be absent from the critical early weeks of a new child’s life and/or dump the childcare responsibilities onto someone else.

That takes us to proxy voting. It’s not a perfect solution, since whoever is going to hold on to “my” representative’s power within the legislative body isn’t the person who should be representing the interests of my district, but I think I’d be satisfied with it. However, that’s not the only remaining option.

How about just giving legislators the option to vote for themselves remotely? Personally, if I was on parental leave, I wouldn’t be interested in doing any of my profession while I’d be focused on having a new child in the household, but not every member of Congress is going to have that mindset. Can they keep up on the issues and votes while tending to their new child? If they think so, let them just keep their vote and vote remotely. Heck, this is even one of the rare occasions where Donald Trump and I are in agreement:

From AP: Trump says he supports proxy voting for new parents in Congress:

“If you’re having a baby, I think you should be able to call in and vote,” Trump told reporters Thursday as he traveled to Florida. “I’m in favor of that.”

(As a post script: “call in and vote” doesn’t involve a proxy, therefore this isn’t “proxy voting” - it’s “remote voting”)