[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]









MEMBER DAY HEARING ON PROXY VOTING AND REMOTE COMMITTEE PROCEEDINGS AS 
            ESTABLISHED BY H. RES. 965 OF THE 116TH CONGRESS

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               before the

                           COMMITTEE ON RULES
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

                        THURSDAY, MARCH 17, 2022

                               __________


[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
                               

                    Available via http://govinfo.gov 
             Printed for the use of the Committee on Rules 
             
                             _________
                              
                 U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
                 
49-396                   WASHINGTON : 2022
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
                           COMMITTEE ON RULES

               JAMES P. McGOVERN, Massachusetts, Chairman
NORMA J. TORRES, California          TOM COLE, Oklahoma
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado                Ranking Republican
JAMIE RASKIN, Maryland               MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas
MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania       GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania
JOSEPH D. MORELLE, New York          MICHELLE FISCHBACH, Minnesota
MARK DeSAULNIER, California,
  Vice Chair
DEBORAH K. ROSS, North Carolina
JOE NEGUSE, Colorado
                       DON SISSON, Staff Director
             KELLY DIXON CHAMBERS, Minority Staff Director
                                 ------                                

             Subcommittee on Legislative and Budget Process

                        JOSEPH D. MORELLE, Chair
MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania       MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas
DEBORAH K. ROSS, North Carolina        Ranking Republican
JOE NEGUSE, Colorado                 TOM COLE, Oklahoma
JAMES P. McGOVERN, Massachusetts
                                 ------                                

          Subcommittee on Rules and Organization of the House

                   NORMA J. TORRES, California, Chair
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado              GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania
  Vice Chair                           Ranking Republican
MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania       TOM COLE, Oklahoma
JOSEPH D. MORELLE, New York
JAMES P. McGOVERN, Massachusetts
                                 ------                                

                  Subcommittee on Expedited Procedures

                     JAMIE RASKIN, Maryland, Chair
DEBORAH K. ROSS, North Carolina      MICHELLE FISCHBACH, Minnesota
  Vice Chair                           Ranking Republican
NORMA J. TORRES, California          TOM COLE, Oklahoma
MARK DeSAULNIER, California
JAMES P. McGOVERN, Massachusetts













                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                             March 17, 2022

Opening Statements:
                                                                   Page
    Hon. James P. McGovern, a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of Massachusetts and Chair of the Committee on Rules.     1
    Hon. Tom Cole, a Representative in Congress from the State of 
      Oklahoma and Ranking Member of the Committee on Rules......     1
Witness Testimony:
    Hon. Rodney Davis, a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of Illinois..........................................     5
        Prepared Statement.......................................     5
    Hon. C. Scott Franklin, a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of Florida...........................................     8
        Prepared Statement.......................................     8
    Hon. John H. Rutherford, a Representative in Congress from 
      the State of Florida.......................................     9
        Prepared Statement.......................................     9
    Hon. Veronica Escobar, a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of Texas.............................................    10
        Prepared Statement.......................................    10
    Hon. Jason Smith, a Representative in Congress from the State 
      of Missouri................................................    12
        Prepared Statement.......................................    12
    Hon. Linda T. Sanchez, a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of California........................................    13
        Prepared Statement.......................................    13
    Hon. Kathy Castor, a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of Florida...........................................    36
        Prepared Statement.......................................    36
    Hon. Steny Hoyer, a Representative in Congress from the State 
      of Maryland................................................    38
        Prepared Statement.......................................    38
    Hon. Mike Gallagher, a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of Wisconsin.........................................    42
        Prepared Statement.......................................    42
    Hon. Chip Roy, a Representative in Congress from the State of 
      Texas......................................................    44
        Prepared Statement.......................................    44
    Hon. Andy Biggs, a Representative in Congress from the State 
      of Arizona.................................................    48
        Prepared Statement.......................................    48
    Hon. Mike Bost, a Representative in Congress from the State 
      of Illinois................................................    50
        Prepared Statement.......................................    50
    Hon. Mark DeSaulnier, a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of California........................................    76
        Prepared Statement.......................................    76
    Hon. Mark Takano, a Representative in Congress from the State 
      of California..............................................    77
        Prepared Statement.......................................    77
    Hon. John W. Rose, a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of Tennessee.........................................    79
        Prepared Statement.......................................    79
    Hon. Bruce Westerman, a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of Arkansas..........................................    81
        Prepared Statement.......................................    81
Additional Material Submitted for the Record:
    Hon. Deborah K. Ross, a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of North Carolina....................................    94
    Hon. Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Representative in Congress from 
      the State of Texas.........................................    97
    Hon. Glenn Thompson, a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of Pennsylvania......................................    99
    Hon. Katie Porter, a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of California........................................   100
    Hon. Kevin McCarthy, a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of California........................................   103
    Hon. Maxine Waters, a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of California........................................   107
    Hon. Nydia Velazquez, a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of New York..........................................   111
    Hon. Paul McCaul, a Representative in Congress from the State 
      of Texas...................................................   114
    Hon. Raul Grijalva, a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of Arizona...........................................   116
    Hon. Rick Allen, a Representative in Congress from the State 
      of Georgia.................................................    00
    Hon. Stacey Plaskett, a Delegate in Congress from the Virgin 
      Islands....................................................   121
    Hon. William Timmons, a Representative in Congress from the 
      State of South Carolina....................................   124
    Article by Punchbowl News, entitled ``Will House Dems get it 
      Together?'' dated March 9, 2022............................   126
    Article by Rep. Matt Gaetz from the Washington Examiner, 
      entitled ``Republicans are getting it wrong on remote 
      voting'' dated November 18, 2020...........................   139

 
MEMBER DAY HEARING ON PROXY VOTING AND REMOTE COMMITTEE PROCEEDINGS AS 
ESTABLISHED BY H. RES. 965 OF THE 116TH CONGRESS [ORIGINAL JURISDICTION 
                                HEARING]

                              ----------                              --

                        THURSDAY, MARCH 17, 2022

                  House of Representatives,
                                        Committee on Rules,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:01 a.m., in Room 
H-313, The Capitol, Hon. James P. McGovern [chairman of the 
committee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives McGovern, Perlmutter, Raskin, 
Scanlon, Morelle, DeSaulnier, Ross, Neguse, Cole, Burgess, 
Reschenthaler, and Fischbach.
    The Chairman. The Rules Committee will come to order.
    Happy St. Patrick's Day everybody.
    March 2020 was a month unlike any in our history. In just a 
few days, the COVID-19 pandemic crystallized in our national 
consciousness and brought the world to a wrenching halt. Within 
a matter of weeks, hospitals were overwhelmed and thousands had 
died. Millions more were laid off as markets crashed and global 
supply chains were upended.
    Life changed overnight. America was in crisis, and Congress 
took action. Starting with an emergency supplemental 
appropriations bill in March of 2020, the House and Senate then 
worked together to quickly pass the Families First Coronavirus 
Response Act, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic 
Security Act, and the Paycheck Protection Program and Health 
Care Enhancement Act; vital bills that helped to keep millions 
of Americans safe and healthy and brought families, small 
businesses, and communities back from the brink of economic 
collapse.
    Yet despite the safety measures we put into place, Congress 
itself was not exempt from the virus. By the end of March of 
2020, over 50 Members of Congress had been diagnosed with 
COVID, jeopardizing our ability to pass important legislation 
during a national emergency, not to mention putting into danger 
every single person those Members came into contact with on 
their way to and from Washington from every corner of the 
country.
    Not wanting to turn every session of Congress into a 
superspreader event, I am proud that the Rules Committee got to 
work, consulting with experts, constitutional scholars, and our 
colleagues on both sides of the aisle, to develop a system for 
proxy voting and remote committee proceedings that allowed us 
to continue conducting the people's business during an 
unprecedented time.
    We weren't alone. Around the world in Canada, Mexico, 
Spain, Japan, and dozens of other countries, parliaments 
adopted various forms of remote voting and hearings to keep 
their respective governments functioning. I am especially proud 
that the House did it in a way that it ensured the integrity of 
the institution and protected the health and safety of 
thousands of workers who make this place function every day; 
from the cafeteria workers and congressional staff, to the 
custodians and the Capitol Police.
    Just over a century ago, the 1918 influenza pandemic 
brought Congress to a standstill. Sickness sidelined so many 
Members of Congress that the House lacked a quorum and was 
literally unable to vote, proceeding only through unanimous 
consent agreements. Contrast that with our response today, and 
the numbers speak for themselves.
    Proxy voting has enabled Members to safely vote on over 600 
recorded votes since the start of the covered period. In fact, 
76 percent of the House, Democrats and Republicans, has voted 
by proxy at least once during the covered period. And I am told 
that House committees have held over 900 virtual hearings or 
markups, enabling them to continue their work.
    We passed lifesaving COVID rescue bills, including the 
historic American Rescue Plan, while ensuring the continuity of 
government during an unprecedented time, advancing 
appropriations bills, the National Defense Authorization Act, 
conducting oversight on the Executive Branch, and much more. 
And I believe that a century from now, historians will look 
back at the work we did to keep this place running, and they 
will say that, during a once-in-a-lifetime global crisis, we 
got the job done.
    And let me just say for the record that I have not voted by 
proxy because I have been lucky. I haven't had COVID. I haven't 
had to care for a child with COVID. I haven't even had to 
quarantine for weeks at a time like so many others. As a person 
who wrote this rule, I followed it to the letter. But at the 
end of the day, I am proud that this option is available for 
both Democrats and Republicans, and I am proud of the fact that 
even most Republicans have voted by proxy.
    Some people have used it because they had to take care of 
children who had COVID. Some people have used it to protect 
vulnerable family members. This rule, I believe, has saved 
lives.
    That is why I look forward to today's conversation. For 
example, we have a member on this committee who currently has 
COVID and will only be able to participate because of the rule 
we passed. I think there is value to that.
    We have been able to hear from witnesses from around the 
world in our committees, broadening our perspective and 
improving our work here. I think there is value to that too.
    America has changed, and Congress met the moment. We didn't 
get everything perfect. There were certainly things I wish we 
would have done differently in this role. But now, as this 
pandemic enters a new phase, I believe that it is important for 
us to discuss how proxy voting and remote committee proceedings 
have worked over the past 22 months, how they helped Congress 
safely operate through the public health emergency, and whether 
what we have learned can instruct the work of this institution 
moving forward.
    You know, I have always said that Congress works best when 
we get to know each other in person, face-to-face. I felt 
strongly about that when the pandemic started, and I still feel 
strongly about that. I also feel strongly that the system of 
proxy voting that we instituted is something that we should all 
be proud of and something that we can learn from. And that is 
what this hearing is about.
    So I hope we have a productive and positive conversation. 
It is hard to do in this place--everything is political--but I 
do hope that is the way the hearing proceeds.
    And, with that, I am happy to turn to our distinguished 
ranking member, Mr. Cole, for any opening comments he may have.
    Mr. Cole. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Before I begin, I want to join you and wish everybody a 
Happy St. Patrick's Day. And I have to say, just looking around 
across the room, I have never seen such a stunning display of 
green ties.
    The Chairman. And if anybody wants coffee, it is Irish 
coffee. We could begin the morning.
    Mr. Cole. Well, in that case, I am throwing this out; I 
will join you. But thank you very much.
    And we are here today to hold a Member Day hearing on proxy 
voting and remote committee procedures.
    In May of 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 
House took unprecedented action and created a system of proxy 
voting on the floor and a system for remote committee 
procedures. At the time, I noted that this was the most 
consequential change to the rules since the establishment of 
the modern committee system in the Legislative Reorganization 
Act of 1946.
    I believe our experience over the last 2 years has borne 
that out. This action was indeed consequential. Unfortunately, 
in my view, the results have not been as positive as all of us 
I think would have wanted.
    Sadly, as I feared, the introduction of proxy voting on the 
floor and remote committee procedures have changed the nature 
of the institution and not for the better. Although some 
temporary form of procedural change in response to the pandemic 
was likely necessary, particularly for Members who physically 
could not get to Washington, D.C., in the early days, I believe 
that both the proxy voting and remote committee procedures have 
long since outlived their usefulness. Continuing these in their 
present form will undoubtedly lead to significant long-term 
damage to the culture of this body and to our ability to 
continue functioning as a Congress.
    We must never forget that the word ``Congress'' literally 
means, quote, ``a physical meeting between delegates,'' 
unquote. Over the past 2 years, we have rarely met this 
definition. Instead, 2 years on, Members often use proxy voting 
and remote committee procedures to avoid traveling to 
Washington and, consequently, never spend time in the same room 
as their colleagues. I just note that, magically, proxy voting 
doubles on Fridays. I am sure that that is something we ought 
to consider. Not every weekend is Super Bowl weekend, and 
probably a few of those proxies that are much more for 
scheduling convenience.
    Mr. Perlmutter. Why were you looking at me?
    Mr. Cole. I actually--just because of that attractive green 
tie. It is eye-catching. I certainly would never accuse my 
friend of anything untoward.
    But, 2 years on, again, as I said, Members often use proxy 
voting and remote committee procedures to avoid traveling to 
Washington and, consequently, never spend time in the same 
room.
    The failure to congregate in person has had serious 
consequences for the culture of this institution. Over the past 
2 years, I personally have observed the decline in civility. I 
think this can be directly linked to the inability of Members 
to get to know one another face-to-face, which is in turn a 
direct consequence of these emergency remote procedures.
    The author Margaret Wheatley once noted that, quote, ``You 
can't hate someone whose story you know.'' In failing to 
routinely come together in person, we are losing our ability to 
learn each other's stories. That has helped contribute to 
rising animosity on both sides of the aisle. Relationships, 
both between Members and with staff, are important. And it is 
important to have all Members physically present in Washington 
to ensure that these relationships are both created and 
maintained.
    In addition, continuing to utilize proxy voting and remote 
committee procedures has negative consequences for legislating. 
When Members are not present in Washington, that lessens the 
ability of the institution to achieve consensus. Without the 
ability to discuss matters in person, face-to-face, Members 
aren't able to fully consider legislation and propose an 
alternative, often leading to a top-down, take-it-or-leave-it 
approach. It is hardly the way to ensure that all Members' 
voices are heard or to ensure a productive legislative process 
that leads to consensus.
    The use of proxy voting has also resulted in the failure to 
maintain a productive and efficient legislative process on the 
floor. With proxy voting, individual votes are sometimes held 
open for long periods of time, frequently extending up to 45 
minutes or longer. With such a long vote time, the majority has 
limited votes to no more than a handful each day. This is meant 
that we instead are avoiding votes altogether, which is 
especially apparent on legislation with a huge number of 
amendments.
    Rather than doing individual votes on each amendment, the 
majority is instead liberally embracing large en bloc amendment 
packages, which makes it very difficult for individual Members 
to know what they are voting on and, likewise, makes it more 
difficult for an amendment to be adopted. This contributes to 
the same take-it-or-leave-it legislative approach and 
contributes to a waiting of voting procedures in such a way 
that frequently benefits the majority at the expense of the 
minority.
    I would also note that while technology has created the 
ability for committees to hold remote hearings, such technology 
is not foolproof. We have seen a myriad of problems emerge from 
these technologies over the past 2 years, ranging from Members 
unable to enter virtual hearing rooms due to technical glitches 
and low bandwidth preventing Members from speaking or appearing 
on camera. None of these problems exist with in-person 
committee hearings.
    Mr. Chairman, I grant that it may have made sense to 
experiment with some alternative procedures at the beginning of 
the pandemic but, today, we are moving steadily toward a broad 
reopening of society. The CDC is no longer recommending broad 
mask mandates and, indeed, the House eliminated its own mask 
mandate 2 weeks ago. Vaccines and boosters are widely available 
to anyone who wants them, testing is widespread and reliable, 
and the Nation as a whole is ready to get back to work and, 
quite frankly, back to normal. This should include the House of 
Representatives.
    It is now time for Members to return to Washington to 
conduct the business of the Nation. We can do this safely in 
person, and we should do so at our earliest opportunity. 
Indeed, there is no reason for us not to.
    Before I conclude, I want to welcome all the Members of the 
House who will be appearing before us today. Member Day 
hearings are an important tradition in the House. And I commend 
you, Mr. Chairman, for doing that today.
    Member Day traditions are--excuse me, gives us all a chance 
to hear perspectives from Members who do not sit on a 
particular committee, and it allows us to hear and incorporate 
new ideas. I have often found these hearings to be invaluable. 
And I am delighted to be hearing from my friends and colleagues 
today, particularly on a topic that is so important to the 
future of the House as an institution.
    With that, Mr. Chairman, I welcome our witnesses to today's 
hearing, and I yield back.
    The Chairman. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
    I just want to point out for the record that we are here in 
person. And the only way that Mr. Neguse, who unfortunately has 
COVID, will be able to participate with us later today is 
because we do have the ability to do remote hearings. And I 
think that is important. That is important for his 
constituents. But we want everybody to be able to participate.
    In any event--and we are going to do these in panels of 
six, if that is okay with my friends here, because there are a 
lot of people who want to testify today. So Representatives 
Davis, Franklin, Rutherford, Escobar, Smith, and Sanchez.
    So why don't we go in that order. Mr. Davis.

    STATEMENT OF THE HON. RODNEY DAVIS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 
              CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS

    Mr. Rodney Davis of Illinois. Thank you, Chairman McGovern, 
Ranking Member Cole. Thanks for hosting the hearing on this 
important topic or, should I say, here we are again.
    Two years ago, I sat here when we first discussed this 
issue, and I said then that there is not one Member serving 
today, nor will be there a Member elected in the future, that 
today's discussion does not affect. And it is as true today as 
it was then, that Members might vote by proxy or participate in 
the duties of our elected office by video link from vacation 
homes, in fishing boats, and occasionally in the wee hours of 
the morning, maybe from the comfort of their own bed.
    These are fundamental changes to the fabric of our 
institution, which has operated in person since before the 
American Revolution, following a tradition that began with the 
Battle of Runnymede in 1215. To paraphrase from the English 
philosopher and writer G.K. Chesterton, sometimes processes 
exist for a reason. And it makes sense to uncover that 
rationale before tearing them down.
    And for Congress, meeting in person is vital for us to be 
able to accomplish the people's work. This is one reason why, 
from the very beginning, many of our colleagues and I have been 
cautious, if not outright opposed, to these departures from 
important and valuable tradition. How dare we be the Members 
that decide not to show up at the Capitol for the American 
people. Generations before us, through a Civil War, two world 
wars, horrific terrorist attacks, pandemics and more, cut no 
corners in service to the American people. And yet over the 
last 2 years, the Speaker and the outgoing majority have quite 
literally allowed Representatives to phone it in.
    And, now, we are here today to discuss how proxy voting or 
remote proceedings should be continued in perpetuity, not as an 
answer to a national emergency, but as a convenience. Where is 
our sense of duty and sacrifice?
    Now as I sit here again, my worst fears about the effects 
of proxy voting and remote proceedings have been proven true. 
We have 22 months of proof that proxy voting and remote 
committee hearings do not serve the American people well.
    And, Mr. Chairman, your own party is experiencing the 
impact. I would like share an excerpt from an analysis from 
Punchbowl News in advance of the Democratic Member retreat last 
week, for which I ask unanimous consent to enter into the 
record.
    The Chairman. Without objection.
    [The information follows:]
    Mr. Rodney Davis of Illinois. Punchbowl said: The multiyear 
COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated the physical and personal 
distance between lawmakers. Proxy voting, remote party 
meetings, and virtual hearings mean House Democrats have spent 
far less time in the same room with each other for the last 2 
years than they normally would. A lot of Democrats, especially 
newer Members, don't even know each other that well. And across 
the entire Caucus, there is a clear lack of trust, Progressives 
versus Moderates, younger versus older, leaders versus rank and 
file. These are just some of the fault lines inside the party. 
Legislative political priorities and prerogatives do not line 
up, end quote.
    Mr. Chairman, you personally predicted that this would be 
the case. In a Dear e-Colleague from May 13 of 2020, you wrote, 
quote, ``In normal times, we work best when we work together, 
face-to-face, and side by side; however, this is an 
extraordinary time and we must adapt,'' end quote.
    Majority Leader Hoyer had similar sentiment stating on May 
20 of 2020, quote, ``Let me be clear at the outset that there 
is no substitute for the personal interaction of members in a 
committee room or on the House floor. But when that is not 
possible because it poses a mortal danger to the health of 
Members, staff, press, and the public, we must provide for 
alternative ways to do the people's business,'' end quote.
    And, in fact, in the same e-Dear Colleague I mentioned, 
Chairman McGovern made clear in his question and answer section 
the following: Will remote voting by proxy be a permanent 
change to the House rules? Would we continue to use it post-
pandemic?
    And the chairman's response, and I quote, ``No. We would 
temporarily implement remote voting by proxy through a special 
order resolution that would allow the Speaker to put the 
process in place for 45 days during a public health emergency 
due to a novel coronavirus.'' Two years later, proxy voting 
remote committee hearings remain in effect.
    Mr. Chairman, even if such extraordinary measures were 
required at the beginning of the pandemic when none of us knew 
how to live with COVID, the pandemic is fading and is no longer 
a sufficient rationale to prolong this deviation from standard 
practice.
    It has become clear that the chairman's words were, at 
best, overly optimistic, and at worst, willfully short-sided. 
If we were to rely on the promises and assurances given by this 
majority, then proxy voting and remote proceedings would have 
ended long ago. Yet, in typical fashion, the majority continues 
to cater to the loudest voices in their caucus, those who have 
become comfortable with the conveniences of the current system. 
And to be frank, it is clear that this has nothing more to do 
with the outgoing majority's weak margins in the House than 
anyone's health or safety.
    So President Biden declared earlier this month in his State 
of the Union Address that thanks to the progress we have made 
this year, COVID-19 need no longer control our lives. I say it 
is time that COVID-19 stops controlling Congress as well.
    The state of Congress is not better today than it was 2 
years ago. That is undeniable. Governing is built on trust and 
relationships. Proxy voting and remote proceedings haven't only 
broken down the communication between Democrats and 
Republicans, they have done so within the parties, within State 
delegations, and within committees as well.
    The halls of the House office buildings used to be 
corridors of open doors, fostering the exchange of ideas and 
common ground. Today, the doors are shut, the halls are empty, 
and the public is locked outside.
    We are no longer in extraordinary times. We have learned to 
live with COVID, and threats to the continuity of Congress have 
subsided. It is time to show up and get to work for the 
American people, period. If that is not the direction this 
majority adopts, it can only be assumed that permanent proxy 
voting and remote committee hearings were the plan from the 
beginning. If that is the case, I hope you at least will pay 
the American people the courtesy of telling them the truth, 
because I assure you, Republicans are here to work.
    Mr. Chairman, it is time to get back on the job in person. 
And I yield back.
    [The statement of Mr. Rodney Davis of Illinois follows:]
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Representative Franklin.

 STATEMENT OF THE HON. C. SCOTT FRANKLIN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 
               CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA

    Mr. Franklin. Good morning, Chair McGovern and Ranking 
Member Cole. Thank you for allowing me to address the Rules 
Committee on this important topic.
    I would like to express my disappointment at the outset 
that we would even consider making proxy voting permanent. The 
proxy vote was only instituted in response to the global 
pandemic, but that pandemic is now shifting to an endemic. The 
House is moving back to normal operations, thankfully, so the 
requirement to vote in person must be reinstated.
    I am a freshman who has never voted by proxy. And, frankly, 
I took a lot of flack for missing votes last year when I flew 
home to Florida to make an official event appearance with my 
Governor at his request. Other than those missed votes, I have 
been present for every other vote. Missing votes will always 
happen, it always has. Allowing Members to skip voting in 
person, a critical part of our duties, is wrong.
    Many of my colleagues have abused the proxy vote. We all 
know it. We do. Some Members have missed 31 days of floor 
votes, the equivalent of seven full weeks of voting.
    The American people sent us to Congress to debate 
legislation, advocate for our constituents, and be present to 
vote on their behalf.
    In the 117th Congress, the House has been in session for 
124 days. That means some Members have been absent for a full 
quarter of the days that we voted. I don't know a single job in 
America, outside of government perhaps, where you can skip work 
25 percent of the time and still be allowed to have a job and 
remain employed.
    While much of America shifted to telework during the 
pandemic, many of my colleagues have chosen to hand over their 
proxy vote to another Member for a variety of non-COVID 
reasons. Colleagues who vote by proxy sign a legal affidavit 
stating that they are physically unable to attend proceedings 
in the House Chamber due to the ongoing public health 
emergency. I am not a lawyer, but it is worth noting that an 
affidavit is, quote, a written statement confirmed by oath or 
affirmation for use as evidence in court.
    I've seen colleagues attend virtual hearings in their cars 
while in route to events in their districts, stand outside the 
Capitol holding press conferences while others voted their 
proxy inside the building, or even post on social media about 
their exotic vacations taken during vote days. But they 
submitted affidavits swearing they were physically unable to 
attend proceedings in the House Chamber due to the ongoing 
public health emergency. And we wonder why the American public 
has such a low opinion of Congress.
    The truth is many of my colleagues on both sides of the 
aisle, and it is truly both, like the convenience of proxy 
voting, but that is not a good enough reason to shirk our duty 
to the American people. It is disgraceful and it needs to stop.
    The success of this institution relies on personal 
relationships and our ability to make the case for priorities 
that our constituents need. We need to build coalitions to get 
our bills across the finish line. We cannot advocate, build 
coalitions, or effectively serve the American public over Zoom 
or voting by proxy.
    As you debate this important issue, I would ask you drill 
down to the heart of the matter and ask yourselves this 
question: Would permanent proxy voting make us a better 
functioning institution and would it make it--or would it 
better serve the American public? Based on the abuses I have 
witnessed, I am certain that answer is no, and I think you know 
that answer too.
    I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
    [The statement of Mr. Franklin follows:]
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Mr. Rutherford.

 STATEMENT OF THE HON. JOHN H. RUTHERFORD, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 
               CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA

    Mr. Rutherford. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Ranking 
Member, and committee members.
    First, let me say that I have never proxy voted. I also 
refuse to participate and assist other Members who wanted to 
proxy vote. And that is because I believe it is a fundamental 
role of every Member of Congress to be here in D.C., to be 
present, to cast a vote, and to do their committee business. 
That is what taxpayers pay us to do.
    Unfortunately, proxy voting started out as a solution to 
pandemic challenges, as the chairman eloquently said earlier, 
but it has now devolved into a method of convenience for some 
Members to avoid their responsibilities.
    In our changing world, it is easy for folks to--and it is 
understandable that they would compare proxy voting to working 
from home, but they are not the same. You see, here is the 
thing about proxy voting that many folks don't understand: 
Members don't need to be physically present at their computer 
to cast a vote, and so they simply have another Member submit a 
vote on their behalf. It is not the same as working from home.
    When a proxy vote is placed, as we have mentioned earlier, 
a Member of Congress must submit a signed document that 
explains the absences due to the ongoing public health 
emergency. Now, this made much more sense when COVID-19--at the 
beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, back before we had vaccines 
and therapeutics.
    There is no excuse anymore, Mr. Chairman. It is being used 
for convenience, not fear of illness. You don't have to use 
hypotheticals to see how this situation is ripe for abuse.
    Instead of being present for a vote, my colleagues have 
gone to political fundraisers, campaign events, space shuttle 
launches, and many, many other nonwork-related get-togethers. 
In another instance, one person even called in to a committee 
hearing from his boat. In fact, there are a few Members who 
have only been up to D.C. a handful of times since the proxy 
voting began. That is unconscionable.
    Mr. Perlmutter. Say that again. What did you say?
    Mr. Rutherford. They have only been to Washington, D.C., a 
handful of times since proxy voting began. In fact, I know one 
whose been here, I think, one time. And the only reason he came 
then was because you couldn't proxy vote for the Speaker. So it 
is obviously being greatly abused.
    It is no longer about the pandemic, and this committee must 
end this practice. We cannot create a scenario where the main 
function of a Representative which is voting on legislation can 
be done while a Representative votes physically and virtually 
absent.
    In the most recent Gallup Poll, 75 percent of Americans 
said they did not approve of the way Congress is handling its 
job; 75 percent. It seems that the perception is that nothing 
gets done around here, and proxy voting sure isn't helping to 
change that perception.
    Finally, proxy voting creates hour-long voting cycles, 
where the people who actually come to work are the ones who are 
punished because it is our time that is being wasted on the 
floor because Members don't want to show up for work. Those who 
proxy vote and those who help them are doing a disservice to 
those here in D.C. trying to get things done.
    The bottom line is, Mr. Chairman, the pandemic is over, so 
we need to return--everyone is to return to D.C. and reconvene 
again in person. It is what our constituents expect. And I am 
asking the committee to finally put an end to this wasteful 
proxy policy. Thank you.
    [The statement of Mr. Rutherford follows:]
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    So I am not skipping over you, Mr. Smith. I am just going 
in order.
    Ms. Escobar.

  STATEMENT OF THE HON. VERONICA ESCOBAR, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 
                CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS

    Ms. Escobar. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. It is good to 
be back in the coziness of the Rules Committee. And I want to 
apologize to the members behind me for giving them my back.
    This is a great conversation, and I think it is really 
important that we all listen respectfully to one another to 
really truly try to come up with a productive and good path 
forward.
    I had the incredible privilege of serving as the El Paso 
County judge for many years. And in Texas, the county judge is 
effectively the head of county government. And when I came in, 
we had no continuity of operations plan. And that was one of 
the first things that I knew I had to do because, if we had a 
flood, or if we had some kind of storm, or if we could not get 
into the building, we had to have a plan. And as I began 
engaging with other organizations about their approach, it 
really became very clear to me that every major organization 
needs to have a continuity of operations plan.
    And Congress did not have one when the pandemic hit, and I 
am proud that we came up with a plan. Could it be more 
efficient? I think we could be more efficient. Should we have 
boundless proxy or remote voting or virtual meetings? I don't 
think we should.
    I think there--and I don't think it needs to be an either/
or proposition at all. I think--and, Mr. Cole, I agree with 
you, I think the human contact and interaction is so important 
when we are talking about policy, when we are trying to come 
together, when we are trying to find ways to solve some of our 
great challenges.
    And, yes, it is true, Congress is so divided. You know, I--
personally, I blame extreme gerrymandering for that, where, you 
know, folks are able to pick their own districts and we are 
getting further and further and further apart. That is 
something I hope we do solve at some point, because we have got 
to do a better job of working together. And we have got to come 
together to do that.
    But I think that we are in a moment where--and it is not 
just Congress, but I think all of America should learn from the 
past 2 years. And every organization should learn from the past 
2 years. And that means looking at what works and what didn't 
work. That means looking at best practices, and it means 
looking at where we might have failed. So that when the next 
pandemic hits or when the next emergency hits, we are ready, we 
are prepared, and we are approaching all of this thoughtfully.
    But when it comes to bringing Congress into the 21st 
century, as I mentioned, does not have to be an either/or 
proposition. And I--you know, I--what I would like every member 
on this committee to think about is every time you have had to 
make a decision between being with your loved one for the birth 
of a child or a grandchild, or attending your child's 
graduation--I remember when my son graduated from college. I 
remember praying when I texted him and asked him when is your 
graduation, I really, really hope that that is an in-district 
workweek so that I don't have to make that decision. 
Thankfully, that momentous occasion landed during an in-
district workweek, and I was able to change my schedule around 
and I could attend my son's college graduation.
    How many of us have had to make the decision between 
showing up for work sick or missing votes? Again, it doesn't 
have to be either/or. I think we can be not just grownups about 
this and trust one another, but I think we can approach this in 
a practical way.
    So if we have--if we create rules around this prospect, 
let's say every Member gets 20 proxy day votes, and so that 
every Member gets a certain number of days where they can proxy 
vote. If they want to spend those 20 days attending, you know, 
in-district events or attending--you know, saving it for sick 
days or saving it for special occasions that they know are 
coming up that year, that should be the Member's prerogative. 
We should treat Members like adults.
    And outside of a COVID pandemic, outside of an emergency 
where we need this continuity of operations plan, then we 
should allow Congress to operate in the same way that most 
other organizations operate. And that way we preserve the 
integrity of the institution, we maintain the advantageous 
nature of being in close proximity with one another that helps 
us chart out a path for a policy and for relationships, but we 
also allow Members the ability to be there for a birth, to be 
there for a funeral, to be there for an important event in 
their lives, or to stay home when they are sick, and to not 
have to make the decision between casting a vote on behalf of 
their constituents and these important life events or in-
district events.
    So my hope is, is that we can be reasonable, and that we 
can look at Congress in a way that where we acknowledge the 
fact that we are all human, the fact that we all want to do the 
right thing by our constituents. I hope this conversation does 
not devolve into pettiness or finger-pointing. That doesn't 
serve anybody well.
    And, again, as my Republican colleagues have noted, on both 
sides of the aisle, we have seen abuses, but we have also seen 
people recognize the challenge that we faced for 2 years as we 
tried to keep one another safe and ourselves safe and our 
families safe.
    So, with that, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, members of the 
Rules Committee, thank you for this really important 
conversation. Thank you for the opportunity that you have given 
me to share my own views. I yield back.
    [The statement of Ms. Escobar follows:]
    The Chairman. Thank you very much.
    Mr. Smith.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. JASON SMITH, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS 
                   FROM THE STATE OF MISSOURI

    Mr. Smith of Missouri. Thank you, Chairman McGovern, 
Ranking Member Cole, and members of the committee. It is always 
a great opportunity to participate in a hearing in the Rules 
Committee.
    The American people have a lot of reasons to be upset with 
the direction of our country. Inflation just hit nearly a, 
well, 40-year high last week at 7.9 percent. We have the 
highest gas prices in 13 years. And we have seen more than 2 
million illegals cross the southern border in the last year.
    These are the kind of national problems the American people 
want Congress to solve. They elected us to do a job, to have 
robust debate, and to make tough choices to take real action in 
Congress. But at the very least, they expect us to show up to 
work.
    And yet for going on almost 2 years now, the idea of proxy 
voting has made a mockery of the legislative process. Under the 
proxy voting rules that still remain in place in this House, a 
Member of Congress could vote to authorize military action. 
They could spend trillions of dollars or to fundamentally 
rewrite our Nation's laws. All of their--all while sitting on 
their couch at home, on a cruise ship, or on a boat, or even a 
fundraiser that just a phone call--with just using a phone call 
to a fellow colleague. Think about that. This has all happened 
in the last 2 years in this body.
    When it comes to committee work, we marked up two 
reconciliation packages in the House Budget Committee. This 
Congress, with a combined price tag of over $7 trillion, $7 
trillion, that is with a T. One of these bills, the so-called 
Build Back Better Act, is the most expensive piece of 
legislation in the history of the United States. Guess how many 
times we met in person in the House Budget Committee. Zero, to 
spend over $7 trillion; the most in the history of this Nation.
    The American people have had their lives turned upside down 
for the last 2 years. In some cases, their lives have been 
destroyed, completely and entirely. The very least Congress can 
do is we can show up for work.
    Like many a bad policies in history, proxy voting starting 
out as a limited measure. Back in May of 2020, it was 
authorized for 45 days. Seventy House Members proxy voted then. 
Fast forward to now, and more than 300 Members have submitted 
letters to the Clerk delegating their votes to other Members.
    Speaker Pelosi has extended proxy voting, not once, not 
twice, but more than 10 consecutive times. In fact, over 17,000 
votes, over 17,000 votes, almost 10 percent of all votes cast 
in the House last year was by proxy.
    A single Representative can cast the vote of 10 absentee 
Members. Theoretically, that means it would take no more than 
20 Members of Congress to conduct business on behalf of the 
entire House of Representatives, on behalf of the Nation. This 
isn't just a wrong way to govern, it is completely backwards.
    It runs counter to the design of democracy. Our Framers 
settled this question over 200 years ago, back during the 
Articles of Confederation and the Constitutional Convention. 
They rejected proposals to permit proxy voting.
    Congress is meant to convey in person. For over 230 years, 
we have operated with in-person quorum calls and voting during 
pandemics and world wars. In 1814, when the British set fire to 
this building, Congress convened in a hotel until the Capitol 
was rebuilt the next year. During the Civil War, troops were 
trained on Capitol Grounds, and they were even quartered in the 
House and Senate Chambers for a brief time. Despite all that, 
Congress, guess what? They still convened in person. In 1918, 
during the Spanish Flu, considered one of the deadliest 
pandemics in world history, Congress still voted in person.
    The job is not meant to be easy. We all knew that when we 
signed up to represent all of our constituents. Nor should we 
make it easy by phoning it in. We are each responsible for 
representing hundreds of thousands of hardworking good 
Americans that should be able to depend on us to show up for 
work, just as so many of them have done, especially during this 
time of crisis.
    With that, I am thrilled to take any questions.
    [The statement of Mr. Smith of Missouri follows:]
    The Chairman. Well, thank you. And just as a personal 
favor, we want to have a productive conversation here. Some of 
us take offense when you refer to people as illegals. I would 
hope that we can stay away from that kind of rhetoric so we 
could actually have a conversation about the topic here. But I 
find that, quite frankly, to be offensive.
    Ms. Sanchez.

  STATEMENT OF THE HON. LINDA T. SANCHEZ, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 
             CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

    Ms. Sanchez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would agree with 
that comment.
    I want to thank you and Ranking Member Cole for the 
opportunity to testify about proxy voting and how we can adapt 
the rules of the House of Representatives to the realities that 
face working parents and, in particular, working moms.
    It is ironic that one of the biggest leaps forward that 
this institution has taken to being more family-friendly was 
actually caused by a global pandemic. When I gave birth to my 
son in 2009, I was only the eighth Member of the U.S.--Member 
in U.S. history to give birth while serving in office. Nearly 
13 years later, I am still one of only 11 Members of the House 
who have given birth while in office.
    In an institution that has always been dominated by men, 
there are all kinds of issues that disproportionately impact 
our small club of moms in Congress. And we have to face many of 
those rules that were created back when only men, quite 
frankly, served in this institution.
    Some are easily solvable. Like, hey, installing a women's 
bathroom near the House floor, which we didn't even have until 
2011. That was 13 years after I was first elected.
    But there is one obstacle to raising children as a Member 
of Congress that has never been easy to solve, and that is the 
schedule. We all understand the obligation to serve the 
constituents of our district, which means day or night, rain or 
shine, and we show up to do the people's business. But too 
often that obligation means we as parents have to choose 
between taking care of our children when they are sick or hurt 
or making sure that our constituents' voices are heard.
    I want to put a little context into some of the challenges 
that working moms in Congress face. I come from the State of 
California. I represent a district there. Washington, D.C., is 
approximately 3,000 miles away from my home. All of my family 
lives in California. When I chose to give birth, I chose to do 
it in Washington, D.C., knowing that I would need to go back to 
work pretty quickly after the birth of my son. I had intended 
to take 4 weeks of maternity leave to heal from the cesarean 
section that I had to undergo in order to give birth to him. I 
had to actually get up out of bed 2 weeks after my cesarean 
section to come and vote in the House of Representatives on an 
important vote.
    I wonder how many of you, after a major surgery in which 
you have stitches and are told by your doctor that bedrest for 
2 to 3 weeks is recommended, would drag yourself out of bed to 
come to work and cast an important vote. But I did it. And I 
understood the sacrifice, and I am proud that I showed up for 
work to do that. But that does not mean that we cannot build in 
flexibility for those types of situations.
    I will never forget when we were facing a government 
shutdown, and my son was a toddler asleep in his bed at night, 
we got called in to vote at 11:30 p.m. at night on a Saturday. 
What person here knows the specific challenge of having to find 
childcare for your child when all of your family is 3,000 miles 
away, and you are here by yourself, and you have to go in to 
vote? It is a question of either waking up your son and taking 
him to the floor with you, which I have had to do, or knocking 
on a neighbor's door and begging them to stay in your home with 
your son asleep until you can return from votes. Those are the 
realities that moms in Congress face.
    We shouldn't have to make that difficult choice to choose 
between our families and our obligations to our constituents. I 
have been here in Congress when I have gotten a call that my 
son was injured at school, and I had to take him to the 
emergency room. And I had to miss votes. And then you get 
criticized for not doing your job or being there when you are 
supposed to be there.
    It is a special kind of situation that women encounter. 
Some men as well. I don't mean to, you know, to overgeneralize. 
But more particularly, the burden falls on women who are still 
the primary caregivers for young children.
    When you are forced to choose between your family and your 
responsibility to vote, it makes you feel like you are letting 
one or the other side down. And that is a hard thing to live 
with. But if proxy voting had existed back then, I wouldn't 
have had to make those choices.
    Congress wasn't built for working mothers, and it really 
shows. And for those who are arguing the historical rules and 
our Founding Fathers and the rules they made, remember that 
when those rules were created, women were not at the table 
helping craft those rules. Women were not even allowed to vote. 
In fact, in those times, women were actually property.
    Make no mistake, with healthcare and the salary that I 
earn, I am more fortunate than many working moms. But if we 
want the United States Congress to look like the people that we 
serve, we have to be more flexible for parents. Preserving the 
option to proxy vote will help us do so. And I agree with 
Veronica, that with proper safeguards, we can reduce the 
abuses.
    I can honestly say I have never proxy voted from a boat. I 
have never proxy voted from my couch. I come into work, and I 
do my work as best as I can, but there are emergencies that 
come up in which proxy voting makes life just a little bit 
easier for me.
    I want to thank the chairman for this opportunity to give a 
perspective that is not often heard here in the hallowed halls 
of Congress, and I yield back.
    [The statement of Ms. Sanchez follows:]
    The Chairman. Thank you very much.
    Let me thank all of you for your testimony. Just a couple 
of things. I just want to cover them for the record. It was 
mentioned--the 1918 epidemic was mentioned. Let me, again, 
remind my colleagues that the House back then was unable to 
function without unanimous consent agreements, because many 
Members couldn't attend in person because of the pandemic. They 
even needed unanimous consent to pass an urgently needed bill 
to get doctors to rural areas after days and days of 
negotiating.
    So let's be honest, does anyone here think we could get a 
UC for something like that today? I mean, we can't even get a 
UC to fix a typo in a bill. So, let's be realistic about what 
the reality is in this Congress.
    Proxy voting and remote committee procedures have allowed 
us to continue our work as normal, unlike in 1918. So I don't 
look at 1918 as, oh, boy, that is our model. If you think it is 
our model, then I would again urge you to go back and read your 
history.
    Secondly, the notion that people are not working if they 
are not in this building. Maybe you know people in your 
conference who that was the case for. But, I don't know 
anybody--most of the people I know who have been operating 
remotely during the pandemic were working pretty hard. I mean, 
we did remote hearings. Sometimes they went really long.
    I wasn't sitting on my couch watching TV; we were engaged 
in trying to move legislation forward. And we have this thing 
called technology, which enables us to do things a little bit 
differently than they did back in the 1800s or 1918. We have 
electronic voting, by the way, which many people opposed when 
it came into being because they thought it was somehow 
unconstitutional or violated the old traditions. I think most 
of us are grateful that we could vote electronically because, 
otherwise, votes would take days to cast here in the House.
    The other thing is that for those Members who have utilized 
proxy voting in a way that we all think they shouldn't have, we 
know about those cases because the news media reported them. 
And those individual Members have to explain themselves to 
their constituents.
    As I said at the beginning, I think this saved a lot of 
lives here. I really do.
    I know Mr. Davis, you had COVID, but you had it during one 
of the breaks. Maybe you think if you had it when we were in 
session, that your constituents should be disenfranchised and 
not have a voice. As much as I disagree with you on most 
things, I still think that you should have the right, 
especially during this pandemic, to be able to represent your 
constituents.
    Mr. Davis, Mr. Smith, Mr. Rutherford, you all feel very 
strongly about this, as evidenced by your opening statements, 
but just out of curiosity, why did you remove yourselves from 
the proxy voting lawsuit?
    Mr. Smith of Missouri. I did not. I mean----
    The Chairman. Yeah. You did. I mean, we told you--your 
names were----
    Mr. Smith of Missouri. Someone else. I didn't sign 
anything.
    Mr. Rutherford. Nor did I.
    Mr. Smith of Missouri. And I have never proxy voted.
    The Chairman. Yeah. And that is fine. I haven't either. And 
I am lucky, right? But going to what Ms. Escobar and Ms. 
Sanchez talked about, life is complicated, right? I mean--and I 
guess the purpose of this is that--hopefully, we are moving 
beyond the pandemic. We all hope and pray that that is the 
case. But this is a time to say, okay, some of the things that 
we put into place, what makes sense and what doesn't? And could 
things be changed? Should we keep some of this stuff?
    I mean, I have heard from many people, Democrats and 
Republicans, who say they like the idea of being able to have 
remote or hybrid committee hearings because somebody could 
testify who lives in California and not have to fly all the way 
here to be there in person. Or you can talk to somebody in 
Ukraine. Or you can talk to somebody halfway around the world 
someplace else. They see value in that. I do too. Personally, I 
think there is something to be said for that.
    And then when it comes to proxy voting--by the way, the 
reason why we did it the way we did--you know, you have you sit 
at your computer--is we wanted to be as transparent as 
possible. You have to file a letter with the Clerk. Your name 
has to be announced on the floor, so everybody knows that you 
are voting by proxy, how you voted. Let me just repeat it 
again. When your vote is counted. You know, computers can be 
hacked. And we thought a low-tech approach, quite frankly, 
would be the best way and the most secure way to be able to do 
it. And so that is the whole reason behind all of that.
    If there is a natural disaster in your district and you 
can't make it here, should you not have the ability to vote? If 
your child has COVID; if you give birth; if you have a major 
surgery; if there is a death in the family. I--you know, those 
are the things that I think are worth talking about.
    And, again, we are in 2022. This is not 1918. And 
technology is advanced. Other parliaments around the world are 
embracing technology more than we are. And the question is, is 
there any room for that kind of discussion? And if we continue 
any part of this--I am not saying that we will--but if we do, 
what do we keep, and what do we not, and how do we make it 
better?
    And, Ms. Escobar, I am told you have to leave. So does 
anyone have any objection if Ms. Escobar leaves?
    You can leave. You are free. All right. But thank you very 
much for your testimony. I appreciate it.
    Ms. Escobar. Thank you for the opportunity.
    The Chairman. I just think this deserves a more serious 
conversation than just the usual political, you know, 
everything is perfect or everything is bad. I mean, this 
requires a lot more thought than that.
    And, again, the idea that this is the cause of the 
polarization in Congress, give me a break, all right? I have 
thoughts on why Congress is so polarized, and a lot of it has 
to do with the aftermath of January 6th, among other things, 
but we won't go there.
    But to say that this is why things are the way they are. We 
spend an inordinate amount of time here together, you know, 
even during the pandemic. So I don't think that that is the 
reason.
    But, anyway, I yield to Mr. Cole.
    Mr. Cole. Well, first, if I may, Mr. Chairman, I think Mr. 
Franklin probably needs to leave as well. So we would ask 
unanimous consent that he be allowed to leave.
    The Chairman. You are free. You are liberated.
    Mr. Cole. Thank you very much.
    The Chairman. And Ms. Sanchez has to leave too.
    Yeah. If I can say one thing, I just want to clarify for 
the record here. The Supreme Court petition from September 2021 
clearly says the only remaining parties were Minority Leader 
McCarthy and Representative Roy on the suit. So I don't know. I 
am just saying, you got cut.
    So, anyway, I yield to the gentleman.
    Mr. Cole. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Before I begin, I would ask unanimous consent to insert for 
the record the statement of Republican Leader McCarthy.
    The Chairman. Without objection.
    [The information follows:]
    Mr. Cole. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Leader McCarthy was unable to be with us in person today, 
but I hope--I took the time to actually read----
    Mr. Perlmutter. He could be here remotely.
    Mr. Cole. I think that would probably contradict his 
position. But, you know, again, he's got things to do. It is 
not unusual for us to submit statements for the record. I think 
my friend has have done that for his colleagues on many 
occasions.
    The Chairman. We happily accept it.
    Mr. Cole. Thank you very much.
    And I hope you have a chance to read it. It is actually--I 
read it this morning. It is actually quite good.
    And like you, Mr. Chairman, Leader McCarthy has never 
proxied, and that he feels very strongly about that and what 
this does long-term to the institution. That is why we are 
having the discussion today.
    Let me begin, Mr. Davis, with you, because I consider you, 
actually, one of the great institutionalists of the House. You 
worked as a staff member for a lot of years. I think 17 years, 
if I recall right, before you became a Member of Congress. So 
you know the institution very well. You have looked at it from 
a variety of perspectives.
    And we have had a number of colleagues make the point that, 
you know, the private sector has adapted to the pandemic 
through expansive work from home, leading to, you know, good 
results for them. In your view, how is Congress different? And 
what would you say to those who say Congress should adapt to 
21st century, you know, set of conditions or rules and 
maintain--as opposed to maintaining the procedures that have 
existed before, you know, modern technology?
    Mr. Rodney Davis of Illinois. Look, there is modern 
technology. And we have adapted, which is why we are having 
this discussion. But in the end, I think our jobs are much 
different than many in the private sector. Our job depends upon 
interaction. Our job depends upon being able to work together.
    And I can't tell you, countless times, I have had 
conversations with my colleagues over my--over my tenure in 
Congress, on the floor, an idea that I say take to your 
leadership, and I will take it to my leadership. And you know 
what? And sometimes those ideas become law. But it takes being 
able to be on the floor and be together. That, to me, is what 
the American people want us to do.
    We have been required to come vote in person until this 
proxy voting was allowed, and it was--even, Mr. Chairman, you 
must have changed your mind considerably over what you stated 
when these proxy rules were put in place, that they would only 
be temporary; that you agreed that we didn't need to make this 
something that was permanent. If that changes, that is okay, 
but I have not changed my opinion on this. And I think it has 
torn the fabric of this institution by tearing us away from 
being able to be with each other.
    Let alone, it has turned votes into days. At some point, we 
have got to get back to the 15 minutes, 5 minutes, maybe even--
you know, I know it is probably folklore, but we used to 
actually have 2-minute votes around this institution that 
cannot happen under this proxy system.
    But if you look at many jobs in the private sector, Mr. 
Cole, have been able to take advantage of technology. But a 
vast overwhelming amount of jobs in this country are requiring 
people to get back into the office. And let's not forget those 
individuals who kept coming to work every day during this 
pandemic. And we should learn from--we should learn from them 
being able to operate in a normal economy, in a normal--in a 
normal situation.
    I mean, we saw grocery store workers on the job every day. 
Now, was there a higher prevalence of grocery store workers 
passing away from coronavirus infections? No. We can work 
together. We can be around each other. We can make this place 
work again. We can harass each other like Ed and I do on a 
regular basis. But we can't do it when Ed is proxy voting 
because I won't.
    The Chairman. He hasn't been on our remote hearings. Ed 
Perlmutter gets harassed all the time, so it's okay.
    Mr. Cole. He may well be the most harassed Member of 
Congress, but he has earned that right, and he gives as good as 
he gets, Mr. Chairman.
    Let me ask you to elaborate on something. So you mentioned 
this in passing, but, you know, and I will just add this as an 
observation myself. It is really unique even on our own staffs, 
you know, what works face to face and what doesn't. I have 
found my case workers are able to do a pretty good job 
remotely. Obviously, my field representatives not so much.
    And so I do--I take my friend's point that, you know, it 
might be different for different occupations, even for 
different positions within the same occupation. But I think we 
are different. And I do think, you know, for the institution to 
work well--and, again, I am not saying this to be critical of 
anything that was done during the pandemic. We are not under 
the same conditions that we were 2 years ago, so I would hope 
we don't maintain the same regimen that we did 2 years ago. And 
we have learned some things in that 2 years as well.
    And I want to commend the chairman for having this 
discussion. I think it is a good discussion.
    But back to my friend, Mr. Davis, again, you have got vast 
experience in this institution. Talk to us a little bit about 
the importance of face-to-face interaction for Members of 
Congress. It might be a lot different for somebody else in a 
different profession, but, again, you have seen this animal 
from about every direction. Why is that, in your view, 
important for us to maintain and get back to as much as we can?
    Mr. Davis. Well, as I mentioned earlier, I have countless 
examples of me working in a bipartisan way with my colleagues 
who I have gotten to know because we have been able to interact 
with each other personally, and we have turned ideas into law 
that benefit all of our constituents. But that wouldn't have 
happened if I didn't have the chance to actually socialize, get 
to know them in an in-person setting.
    And when you look at--you look at where the institution is, 
I think--I agree with probably everybody in this room. This 
place has never been more polarized in my career. It is as high 
in political temperature as I have ever seen it. And I think 
the only way that we can bring that temperature back down again 
and begin to see us all work together is to focus on getting 
together in person, focus on that face-to-face, focus on in-
person committee hearings.
    I used to work in the district office. When my former boss 
would come home, he was in the district doing district work, 
meetings, one-on-ones, you know, open office hours. We have 
seen this majority hijack the days that should and could be 
used for district work period with remote hearings because it 
is convenient rather than doing those hearings in person.
    And those hearing rooms in person are a great way--and as 
you know, it is a great way--look around this room. You guys 
spend a lot of time together in Rules, but you get to know each 
other. And you get to discuss, debate, and disagree, and then 
you go have a beer together, then you go crack a joke together 
because you realize it is more about personal relationships. 
That is what is not happening with remote proceedings. That is 
not what is happening with proxy voting. We are getting away 
from what our forefathers envisioned.
    And I know there are plenty of times that many Members of 
Congress throughout history had to make the tough decision to 
miss some votes. I had to do it to go back for my wife to get a 
colonoscopy checkup. It was during approps season. My 
percentage of voting went down substantially. But you know 
what? If I am criticized for that, I am very happy to remind 
whoever is criticizing me of the reason I missed those votes. 
That should not be an excuse to give people an excuse not to 
come to work.
    Mr. Cole. Well, I couldn't agree more. I have to tell you, 
though, as much wonderful time as we have spent together up 
here and as good friends as we are, it is still nine to four 
pretty much every vote, so--and I say that to make the point, 
each committee is really different.
    And I just want to add this before I get to my last 
question to my friend: I want to single out a committee 
chairman that I think has done this extraordinarily well and 
that is Chairwoman DeLauro of the Approps Committee. You know, 
we certainly had remote hearings and whatever, but every markup 
we did was in person.
    We would go to the Ways and Means meeting. We would 
socially distance. We would put on our masks. We got all 12 
bills done by July of last year, by the end of the August 
break. And I actually give the House a lot of credit here. We 
were ready to move on a lot of them. We moved nine of them 
across the floor. I see my good friend, the majority leader 
back there, who got that done.
    And the reason why we had a good outcome, I think, last 
week where we came together and in a bipartisan way passed an 
omnibus bill is a lot the relationships and the manner in which 
Chairwoman DeLauro operated throughout the pandemic. She 
adjusted to the reality. She played by the rules, but we 
certainly didn't go any lengthy period of time. I don't think 
we ever marked--matter of fact, I know we never marked up a 
bill and weren't in person. And that makes a huge difference in 
terms of the amendment process and everything else.
    So, again, I think there are a lot of lessons to be learned 
there, and she did it the right way. And I think that made it 
possible for a lot of Republicans who had not supported any of 
those bills last year, but once the bargaining was done and, 
hey, this is my concern, here or whatever, and we had a lot of 
Members, you know, on both sides come together for both of 
those bills because of the manner in which they had been 
crafted.
    And I know she would get us back--I don't presume to speak 
for her, but everything she did would suggest to me that she--
you know, she likes the traditional give and take in committee 
hearings. She conducts it very fairly and very openly. We don't 
win a lot of votes because we are not the majority, but we have 
our opportunities. And, again, it just builds a lot of good 
relationships and helped us a lot last week when I think we 
really needed to come together and get something done for the 
country.
    Let me just ask you this last question, Mr. Davis, you have 
mentioned that 22 months, in your view, has provided a lot of 
proof that proxy voting and remote proceedings do not serve the 
American people well. Can you expand a little bit on that 
point, the differences that you have seen, and maybe why we 
should certainly reconsider the current regime for sure? We may 
have some differences on whether this is ever appropriate or 
not. I tend to fall down in the more traditional category 
there.
    But I think give and take, it is hard to see, even if we 
had to do this why we would continue to do this, because I 
think, on balance, you made the point, this is not good for the 
institution; it doesn't get us where we need to be. So, if you 
are looking at the whole 22 months in totality, how would you 
describe what happened and where we should go based on our 
experience in that time?
    Mr. Davis. Well, remember, this proxy voting was 
implemented by the majority as a temporary emergency measure. 
We are not in an emergency anymore. It should only have been 
temporary. But this is--these are some of the concerns that I 
brought up to this committee when Majority Leader Hoyer and I 
testified in front of the Rules Committee in the Ways and Means 
room 2 years ago, and it is exactly what I was afraid of then.
    It has led to the hyperpolarization. I am glad Chairperson 
DeLauro is doing in-person markups because, in three of my 
committees, that is not the case. We did multiple highway 
reauthorization markups via video. And they were nothing--all 
of the markups I have had in the committees that I serve on in 
this Congress have been partisan. And I agree with you, Ranking 
Member Cole, that a lot of it has to do with the lack of being 
able to have bipartisan interaction in that committee room. 
That is where I have developed some of my best bipartisan 
friendships.
    So those are just--those are the end result of this so-
called temporary measure that we are debating to make somewhat 
permanent now. But you don't have to go too far. All you have 
to do is look at some of the remote hearings that have been in 
place. We lose our ability to exercise our oversight 
responsibility with executive branch officials and private 
sector officials.
    When they are sitting on the other side of a computer, 
they--we don't know who's standing behind them, telling them 
what to respond to our questions. The ability for us to do our 
job has been impacted by technology and not necessarily 
positively all the time.
    But there is also a distinct difference because--one other 
thing to answer your question though. At GovTrack, they 
recognize that this Congress is on pace to actually be one of 
the least productive Congresses. But if you look at how many 
remote hearings we had, I mean, that has taken our productivity 
away back home, and I think those are concrete examples, sir.
    But there is a distinct difference between the proxy voting 
process and the remote technology being utilized. I hope the 
majority and the minority take that into consideration. Proxy 
voting has been a disaster that has torn this institution 
apart, and I will continue to believe that because I have 
witnessed it, and we have all witnessed it. Now, we can put our 
heads in the ground. We can act like the Broncos are going to 
win the AFC West because they got Russell Wilson.
    Mr. Perlmutter. We are. You guys don't have a chance.
    Mr. Davis. Not going to happen. Not going to happen. And I 
will--go Raiders. Broncos suck. I yield back.
    Mr. Cole. Let me--before we go on, if I may, Mr. Chairman, 
I actually want to refer to an individual case just to make 
this point. When we were holding a markup for the Interior 
Appropriations bill, I offered an amendment to provide 
additional funding for something called the McGirt case in 
Oklahoma. You know more about it than most Members of Congress 
because you have had to listen to me. But it is a Supreme Court 
ruling that basically, you know, reestablished reservation 
status in vast parts of the State in terms of criminal 
jurisprudence. And it put a lot of burdens on Tribes that had 
to then stand up police forces and judicial systems that had 
not had to do that as robustly.
    So I offered the amendment, explained the problem. The 
majority didn't know a lot about it. There is no reason why 
they should. It is peculiar to my State. And they had not 
allowed for it in the bill. They had allowed in the--earlier in 
the justice bill for additional Federal resources that the 
Biden administration had requested with my support, but nobody 
had really thought about the Tribes.
    So I offered the amendment. I knew that it would--and, you 
know, it was going to fail and on a party line vote. So I 
withdrew the amendment so that the committee would have more 
time. Then I got up, walked over to my good friend, the 
chairwoman of Interior, Ms. Pingree from Maine, explained: 
Okay, here is the issue. Here is the problem we are running 
into.
    And she goes: Tom, we can't fix this right now, right here, 
but I want to learn more about this. I want to talk to you 
about this. I want to negotiate, see what we can do to help.
     mean, just exactly what you would want any chairman to do 
in a situation like that.
    It took a while, but lo and behold, we passed the omnibus 
bill. There was $60-odd million to help these Tribes that were 
impacted deal with this problem. But if that had been a remote 
hearing, I couldn't have gotten up, walked over to my friend, 
explained off the record or, you know, out of the context of 
the hearing, here is the deal. You know, we have worked 
together on a lot of things. She is a terrific appropriator and 
very sympathetic on tribal issues, very knowledgeable about 
them because there is certainly Tribes in Maine.
    But the point is, you know, the more of that kind of action 
we have, the more a lot of problems can be taken care of. And 
it certainly made it much easier for me to vote for that bill 
when it happened and much easier for us to address the problem.
    And I don't think anybody deliberately, you know, wants to 
get away from that, but I think it is something we ought to 
think a lot about just as an institution as to how we work, 
because the reality is a lot of problems around here get solved 
that way. They get solved not even in a hearing but in--because 
we are all together in the hearing, you can get up, walk over, 
here is the deal, here is why I am offering this, last thing I 
want to do is put you in an embarrassing spot. I am going to 
withdraw the amendment because I don't want to get you down as 
a ``no'' right now until you know more about it. If you are 
still ``no,'' that is fair enough. But, you know, again, we 
lose that kind of thing.
    So, again--and I want to commend you, Mr. Chairman, for 
having, again, this hearing so we can have this kind of 
discussion about where we want to go and how we want to operate 
in the future, and so thank you very much.
    Mr. Davis. Mr. Cole.
    Mr. Cole. Yes, sir. I would yield to my friend.
    Mr. Davis. One last thing I hope the committee considers: 
If and I think when the majority changes, I mean, many of these 
discussions--many of these policies may change in the rules 
package. So consider this now, we are talking about a matter of 
months that you want to--that you may want to try to implement 
technology and processes that could be changed by new 
leadership in this Congress. So I want to make sure that the 
committee considers that as you are moving forward.
    Mr. Cole. Thank you. And, again, Chairman, thank you very 
much. And I yield back.
    The Chairman. Yeah, thank you. And let me, again, remind 
people why we are doing this hearing. We don't have a bill to 
do anything right now. We thought this would be an appropriate 
time to hear what people thought about what has been in place. 
Some want to keep things as they are; some want to get rid of 
everything. You heard Ms. Escobar come up with a kind of a 
creative way to approach this. Others have different opinions.
    So this notion that somehow, here we are, continuing this 
forever, I think we are trying to get information from people 
about what worked and what didn't work.
    I would just say, I really have to take issue with the fact 
that somehow this is the least productive Congress. I mean, a 
historic infrastructure package that many of you guys voted 
against but are taking credit for in your districts. The 
American rescue package, incredible legislation to combat the 
COVID pandemic. I could go on and on and on. You may not like 
all the things that we produce, but to somehow say that this 
has been the least productive Congress I think just defies 
reality.
    Mr. Perlmutter.
    Mr. Perlmutter. Thanks, Mr. Chair. And I will save many of 
my comments for the next panel, but just to you three, and, Mr. 
Smith, you have been up here a lot. In fact, you were up here 
several times on Build Back Better. So we actually had in-
person hearings where you testified, and I can remember them 
distinctly because you have a very distinct way of making a 
presentation.
    Mr. Smith. I appreciate that.
    Mr. Perlmutter. So--but, I guess, I couldn't be farther 
away from all of your testimonies, because--and I would say to 
my friend, Mr. Davis, and we actually had this debate 2 years 
ago when we talked about this. And I am much more Libertarian 
than anybody, Democrats or Republicans, because I think we 
ought to just do everything by remote--I mean, not do it but 
offer that without any kind of, well, you have got to come in 
here with your doctor's excuse. Because I don't want Mr. 
Morelle saying: Well, you don't have cancer, you have got--only 
have a bad cold, you should have been here.
    And I don't want Mr. Cole deciding: Well, you know what, it 
is not a wedding, but it is a bat mitzvah.
    You know, is that really what we should be doing? And I 
don't think we need to police each other.
    And this is where I disagree with you, Mr. Rutherford, and 
I appreciate your testimony, but it is the 820,000 people that 
I represent that are the ones that are going to make a 
determination as to whether or not I have done right by them, 
not you, not Mr. McGovern, not Mr. Morelle.
    And I appreciate Mr. Cole's comments about, you know, this 
place works better when you are here. And I--look, I agree with 
that, all right. I think this place serves somebody with a 
bubbly personality like mine, okay. But, on the other hand, you 
know, if my dad has passed away and I have got to be at home as 
part of the funeral, which I did and I missed a defense 
authorization and a whole bunch of votes on that, I don't want 
to disfranchise all the people that I represent. And I could 
have been able to at least participate in that and not miss 
those particular votes.
    So, you know, I personally think that this thing has worked 
out well. One of my best friends now is--and he will probably 
deny it--is William Timmons. And the reason he became--we 
became close is we were on a Zoom where you are facing 
everybody actually, as opposed to the way--and you and I are 
supposed to be in another hearing right now as to how we set up 
the committee rooms instead of, you know, either looking at the 
back of somebody's head or in opposition, which leads to 
conflict. It doesn't lead to collaboration. This one is a 
little more, we are closer, we can see each other's face, but 
in most committees, you can't. And we had some down time, we 
started talking. I brought up something, he responded. 
Everybody kicked in. And all of a sudden, we had a conversation 
on Zoom like we rarely have in a committee room, and he became, 
you know, one of my best buddies here.
    So I--you know, this--it is what you take advantage of, how 
do you use the technology, and we have the technology. We 
can't--we have got to be in this century. We can't just deny 
where we have come. Ms. Sanchez' testimony is about as 
compelling as anything I have ever heard. It really does--you 
know, a young family has--you have got to give them a break so 
that they can represent the people that sent them here.
    So I will yield back. I was curious, Mr. Davis, who wrote 
that Punchbowl News thing that you read? Did you?
    Mr. Davis. It must have been one of their crack reporters, 
Ed. You will have to ask them.
    Mr. Perlmutter. Okay. No, I mean, this place, you have got 
to--you know, you said, and I think you almost proved the 
opposite of the case, you say, on the one hand, let's really 
speed up votes on the floor so we can get out of here and not 
waste people's time, but at the same time you said let's all be 
together because then we really, you know, get along and we 
come up with new ideas.
    Mr. Davis. But you are not together when you have a 
cumulate of proxy votes because every proxy, everyone who is 
catching that proxy vote is not there.
    Mr. Perlmutter. But I hear you on that. But, on the other 
hand, what I am saying is, if we are--before or after, if we 
are here and we take time, let's say we make everything 15-
minute votes whether we have proxy voting or not, you think 
that is going to make the place better because now you and I 
can visit a little more? Maybe it will. I mean, that is your 
testimony.
    Mr. Davis. Well, there have been plenty of times that I 
probably think we have had better conversations walking back 
from votes in the hallway----
    Mr. Perlmutter. True, or playing catch.
    Mr. Davis [continuing]. So--or playing catch. But those are 
the things that--the institution has not been positively 
impacted by proxy voting.
    Mr. Cole. Would the gentleman yield----
    Mr. Perlmutter. Certainly.
    Mr. Cole [continuing]. Just for a quick question, a quick 
point to my friend? And this isn't meant in any sense other 
than just an observation. I will tell you, one of the things 
that has bothered me the most about what we have done is the 
extensive use of en bloc bills, and the reason why is simply we 
are all confronted with these deals whether it is maybe one you 
agree with in 10 votes. And you put them in these things, and 
we know--we all know who the Republican ones are, the Democrat 
ones, the bipartisan ones. And so a lot of amendments that 
might otherwise have passed or gotten serious consideration 
just simply don't. That is nobody's fault. I am not being 
critical of anybody. But that is something I would like to see 
us get away from and back to the 2-minute vote, because it is 
an individual vote. Then I can vote for something that one of 
my friends offers on the other side without voting for the nine 
things I disagree with when I really want that. And it does 
push us into partisan thing. Now, again, I don't blame that on 
anybody, but that to me is something I would really like us to 
get rid of and go back.
    Mr. Perlmutter. Reclaiming my time.
    Mr. Cole. I yield back.
    Mr. Perlmutter. I agree with you. I agree with you 100 
percent. I am just trying to say, if what we are looking for is 
that we all be together all the time on the floor because then 
we will come up with better ideas and more collaboration, okay, 
you know. But then, on the other hand, you say, well, let's 
speed it up and get out of here. I mean, let's--you have got 
to--you can't have it both ways. So----
    Mr. Davis. My initial comments, I didn't mean to say that 
just spending time on the floor is only the opportunity. It is 
also that interaction that you can have throughout your day.
    Mr. Perlmutter. And, look, I agree with you. And if this 
were a perfect world, yes, but people get sick, people have 
things that go on in their lives.
    And, Mr. Rutherford, you are absolutely right when you 
said, you know, some folks have violated the affidavit that 
they signed, and you are right. Now, me, I am going to say, you 
don't need to sign an affidavit. You can come or go, vote 
remotely, vote not, and the people will decide whether you 
ought to be returned or not, you know, as opposed to you trying 
to be the doctor: Your excuse is not--Perlmutter, your excuse 
is not good enough to have voted proxy.
    And with that, I will yield back.
    The Chairman. Thank you. And I too--I thought 
Representative Sanchez' testimony was very, very powerful, and 
it forces us to actually think about this place from a 
different perspective.
    Dr. Burgess.
    Dr. Burgess. Yes, Mr. Chairman. Being respectful to the 
majority leader's time, do we need to let him give his 
testimony or should we continue? I mean----
    Mr. Rutherford. I need to go.
    The Chairman. Oh, Mr. Rutherford needs to leave.
    Dr. Burgess. Okay. Well, then part of what I have to say 
reflects on your testimony.
    So, Rodney, I do--Chairman Davis, Ranking Member Davis, I 
do have to correct one of the things that you alluded to. I 
have never had a beer with Chairman McGovern nor do I ever 
intend to, but--because I----
    Mr. Cole. That, my friend, it is worth the experience. I 
have.
    Dr. Burgess. It is because I don't drink beer. I mean, it 
is really as simple as that.
    You are right on your observations having to remain home 
while your wife was having a procedure done. One of the 
problems that has been encountered with the length of time that 
we have been in this proxy voting situation is that we have got 
a five vote difference between Republicans and Democrats.
    There are times when I would have missed a vote in the past 
and been able to justify it to constituents back home. But I 
also come under some pressure from the whip to not be 
unrecorded on a vote because it is going to be very narrow. 
Now, it is all very difficult when the majority always comes to 
the floor with 223 votes so you--there is no drama. There is no 
guessing about what is going to happen. But if there were to be 
one or two votes that peeled off or went differently than would 
be predicted, suddenly things become a contest again, and the 
unilateral disarmament that was required of our side really was 
untenable with the fact that this has gone on so long and 
doesn't really seem to be any prospect of ending.
    So I just want to make that statement in defense of people 
who felt it necessary to be at home for a very important and 
good reason and at the same time didn't want to disadvantage 
their conference by not being there to have their vote 
recorded.
    And, Mr. Rutherford, and I think Mr. Franklin also brought 
it up, you are right. The disrespect of the amount of time, the 
disrespect to Members because of the amount of time that is 
required to be on the floor for a vote, I long for the day we 
can get back to 2-minute votes. I wish we could get Doug 
Collins back in the chair because, man, those 2-minute votes 
they were 2-minute votes. And, if you blinked, you might miss 
one.
    But that is--it just allows so much more input from us 
rank-and-file members, particularly on things like 
appropriations, NDAA, some of these--transportation bills, some 
of these big things we consider to have our amendments 
considered individually and not in an en bloc and then defeated 
en bloc, and it is like you never existed. But it is also--I 
mean, it is an imposition for us to have to sit on the floor 
for every vote being a 15-minute vote. And you can never 
curtail that because of the length of time it takes to proxy 
vote. So I hope we are on the precipice of being done with 
this. I do think it is time. Mr. Davis, to your observation 
that the polarization, yeah, it is a problem. It is not new. It 
has been there for a while.
    Columnist George Will back in the Clinton administration, I 
remember, said the country is evenly divided, but it is not 
sharply divided. Well, guess what, we have been sharply 
divided. And that is why Congress is sharply divided because we 
represent the people that send us here. Our division is a 
reflection of the status of the country, and what we can do to 
perhaps try to improve that is certainly something we should 
spend our time doing.
    I am grateful we are having this. I think a Members Day is 
extremely important. We don't do that nearly enough in any of 
our committees, and having this in person to be able to see 
each other eye to eye, I think, is important.
    Mr. Smith, it is my first term on the Budget Committee. 
Yesterday was the first time I have sat at the dais in the 
Budget Committee for an in-person hearing and discovered that 
you have the longest dais in any of the committee rooms that I 
have ever been in. You can barely see the people at the other 
end. They are in another ZIP Code.
    But it is important, and it is important that we--you are 
right. We spent so much money on those reconciliation bills, 
and the markups were perfunctory. We really couldn't add or 
delete items. We were just--it was really just almost a pro 
forma type session, and that is not the way it should be. The 
least productive Congress, I would agree with you. Most 
expensive Congress, without question.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will yield back.
    The Chairman. Well, thank you. And I--just for the record, 
I want to remind my friend that we are doing this hearing in 
person because I miss being with you so much, so I----
    Dr. Burgess. And I understand why, and I respect that.
    The Chairman. But also I should say that, during the height 
of the pandemic, this room was always available----
    Dr. Burgess. Yes, it was.
    The Chairman [continuing]. For the minority to meet and so 
we tried to make every accommodation possible. But----
    Dr. Burgess. I appreciate that you did.
    The Chairman. And we all have to deal with the 
inconvenience of long votes. You know, maybe what might help is 
if we could curtail the number of procedural votes, that might 
also--because that is an inconvenience, not just to members but 
to staff as well.
    But, in any event, Mr. Morelle.
    Mr. Morelle. Ms. Scanlon is here.
    The Chairman. Oh, I am sorry. Ms. Scanlon.
    Ms. Scanlon. Thank you, Chairman McGovern. I appreciate it.
    You know, proxy voting and remote hearings, I believe, have 
been an invaluable resource the past 2 years. I fought to make 
this rules change at the outset of the pandemic because I 
wanted to protect my family, my community, and to protect the 
continuity of government for this body. And I believe those 
measures have been successful and should be continued in some 
form. During this time, the House has been able to function 
smoothly and efficiently, allowing us to quickly respond to the 
COVID pandemic and economic recession.
    You know, I have not used the proxy voting allowance, 
although I fought hard for it to be included. But I am not with 
you this morning because I had an inconclusive test yesterday, 
and I didn't think I should be there in that cozy Rules room 
until I got a negative test, which thankfully I have, but I 
didn't think I should be infecting other Members of Congress 
when there was an option that allowed me not to.
    So these tools have allowed floor action to continue 
unabated when Members can't congregate. They have allowed 
Members who contracted COVID to participate in floor 
proceedings and hearings, and they have greatly improved the 
quality and diversity of witnesses for committee hearings. 
While the rules change were put into place to respond to 
specific circumstances, they have also shown that Congress can 
greatly benefit from moving into the 21st century along with 
our business, education, research, and other communities.
    Yesterday was a great example of that. We were able to have 
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy address Congress from 
an active war zone halfway across the world. In our hunger 
roundtables here in Rules and in hearings in my other 
committees, we have been able to have witnesses testify from 
all over the United States, bringing their invaluable, unique 
experiences to the legislative process.
    And we were--it is incredibly valuable to hear those 
people. And I believe we have also saved tax dollars by saving 
the expense of bringing folks to Washington or forcing them to 
bear that expense, which has prevented many witnesses from 
being able to testify before us in the past.
    Proxy voting, on the other hand, is a low-tech solution to 
our pandemic problems which has proved useful well beyond its 
original purpose. It has allowed the House to function through 
the worst of the pandemic when the Nation was experiencing 
thousands of new cases a day. And even today, as we see Members 
having to deal with positive tests, it allows us to continue to 
function. It has kept us safe, it has kept our families and 
loved ones safe, and Congress has been able to work through the 
pandemic without interruptions.
    These two things, proxy voting and remote hearings, have 
also allowed Members to do their jobs while attending to the 
emergencies and necessities of everyday life. We have had 
Members use these tools to undergo cancer treatment and 
maternity leave, to handle personal and family emergencies, and 
to actively respond to disasters and other emergencies in their 
districts.
    Moving forward, I believe we should keep proxy voting and 
remote hearings, but I do agree we should make some changes to 
promote transparency and accountability. I am glad the 
committee is having this hearing today so we can look at what 
some of those changes should be, but we need to acknowledge 
that we need to maintain these rules for some time until we 
truly get past the pandemic because the pandemic is not through 
with us yet.
    And, while we have made so much progress in beating back 
COVID, cases obviously persist. We know a new variant is 
spreading and will soon likely be in the U.S. as well. So I am 
looking forward to hearing everyone's perspective on this and 
having a serious discussion about these rules.
    So, with that, I would yield back.
    The Chairman. Thank you. Mr. Reschenthaler.
    Mr. Reschenthaler. Thanks, Mr. Chairman, and thanks for 
having this hearing on this topic.
    And there has been some charges about en bloc--I just want 
to start by saying, there has been some charges about en bloc 
amendments and certain people, yeah, in certain caucuses making 
procedural votes. But I would say that to disfavor a certain 
caucus, for example, or certain personalities deprives 
everybody the tools necessary to use, especially when there are 
some Members that have been just unilaterally taken off 
committees. They have absolutely no other recourse other than 
to make procedural votes. But I want to explore that topic with 
Chairman Biggs and Mr. Roy on the next panel.
    But with that--you might be one of those Members that 
people don't like, Mr. Roy. I am just--I am kidding, but I like 
you. I mean that. You know that.
    Mr. Davis, would you like to talk about the en bloc 
amendments and the procedural implications?
    Mr. Davis. I don't know why you don't like Mr. Roy. I do, 
so----
    The Chairman. Could the gentleman yield just for one 
second? Mr. Smith has to leave. Are you okay? We are okay? 
Yeah. Any objection?
    Mr. Perlmutter. I want you to stay. I object. He has to 
stay.
    Mr. Reschenthaler. I had questions for both of them. It is 
okay.
    The Chairman. You can require them to stay if you want.
    Mr. Reschenthaler. No. If you guys have to go, go ahead.
    The Chairman. All right.
    Mr. Perlmutter. I withdraw my objection.
    Mr. Reschenthaler. Jason has to stay, but Rutherford has to 
go.
    Mr. Davis. So the en bloc issue, the vote time issue, you 
know, it is a problem. And I think it goes beyond the 
discussion we are having today, Mr. Reschenthaler. I think this 
is a majority process to keep a very small majority they have 
of voting for the bills that should be more bipartisan.
    I mean, I know Dr. Burgess talked about how, you know, 
there have been times Members of both parties had to make the 
decision to proxy. They are getting a lot of pressure from our 
whip team or their leadership or what have you. Let me just 
say, can you imagine what a discussion on an infrastructure 
package or a Build Back Better might have been if the majority 
was even closer? Maybe the bills would have been more 
bipartisan. Maybe we would have gotten back to what vote 
margins that I used to see when I got here when this place was 
somewhat less polarized.
    The length of time with voting, I do believe en blocs are 
put in place because of the long vote times that are required 
because of proxy voting right now. I think that is a cause and 
an effect, and I am glad you, Ranking Member Cole, brought that 
up.
    And we do have a lot of Members of Congress that have been 
sworn in over the last two Congresses that don't know what it 
was like to have 2-minute votes. They don't know what it is 
like to have this campus open and have meetings being brought 
to you in the Rayburn room. And it is going to be a shock when 
that happens unless we can gradually get them back to that by 
getting rid of proxy voting, by making sure that we don't rely 
upon remote technology.
    And I appreciate the comments Ms. Scanlon had, but there is 
absolutely no comparison of what President Zelenskyy had to do 
from a war zone to us having a hearing in the United States 
Congress. We can use technology to our advantage, but we can't 
continue to allow technology to take advantage of us.
    And, Mr. Chair, if it helps, I will sit by you every 15-
minute vote if it gets us back to quicker votes.
    The Chairman. It won't help.
    Mr. Reschenthaler. Ranking Member Davis, the juxtaposition 
of people remoting into these hearings when you had President 
Zelenskyy remote in from a war zone is an amazing 
juxtaposition. It is also an amazing juxtaposition that the 
Ukrainians are literally being bombed right now, and they are 
still meeting in person. There is no proxy voting in Ukraine, 
so it is clearly astonishing.
    There is some talk--I have heard some testimony about folks 
that have proxy voted somehow forfeiting the right to object to 
proxy voting. And I have proxy voted, but I am against proxy 
voting. But I think the argument needs to be made, and maybe 
you can explore this, that we may disagree with this rule, but 
we are not going to play by rules that have been changed to 
favor the majority. And I would be willing to bet that if we 
got--that if we didn't proxy vote, even though we disagree with 
that, you would artificially inflate the majority's vote count. 
Would you like to talk about that?
    Mr. Davis. Yeah, we are not in the majority. We don't set 
the rules. Being a Raider fan, we have seen how rules have 
impacted games at very inappropriate times in the playoffs, 
numerous examples of that. Then the rules change. We are no 
different than the NFL when it comes to, once the rules are 
set, you have to operate within that system.
    And that is exactly why I don't begrudge our Members who 
are adamantly opposed to proxy and for utilizing a process that 
is now in place. But that doesn't mean that it justifies 
keeping it. It doesn't mean that it has helped the institution.
    And I go back to my original comments that I said 2 years 
ago, that this is a process that was about more control. And we 
think back, we used to have proxy voting only in committees, 
and there are some Members who served back then, some in 
Democratic leadership. And when the Republicans took over in 
1995, we got rid of that process. It was because it was--it 
became a power grab and a source of power for the committee 
chairs.
    You always knew you had enough votes to get what you want 
passed, and it hurt the institution. We got rid of it because 
it was bad. And I believe the proxy voting process on the floor 
has similar negative consequences for the long-term viability 
and the ability for us to govern in a bipartisan way.
    Mr. Reschenthaler. Ranking Member Davis, to that point, you 
made some comments about you worried about future Members and 
how this is going to affect future Members. Could you elaborate 
on that?
    Mr. Davis. Yeah, we had a disastrous orientation during 
COVID. I mean, it couldn't be the same as what an orientation 
normally was, and we have got to do better. We have seen that 
we have got--I mean, we had some fresh--too many freshmen get 
caught up by not understanding processes like the STOCK Act. 
Obviously, that means the majority and I, on House 
Administration, we need to do a better job of orientation.
    But there is no better orientation than actually the floor 
processes here in the House for a new Member of Congress to 
understand. But the processes that have been in place for these 
new Members have been, you know, supposedly temporary, but they 
have been much different than what we all experienced when we 
got here.
    And I am afraid when we have got not just one freshmen 
class, the most recent one, but even the class before had--they 
at least had a year. But as we go into this new remap class, 
which are traditionally larger, we are going to have to retrain 
when it comes to floor procedures some of the existing 
colleagues that we have because they haven't been used to it.
    And, really, a lot of time that we have spent on the floor 
during this pandemic has been Members not wanting to talk to 
other Members because they have been afraid of getting COVID. 
So the sooner we get out of these temporary measures like proxy 
voting, the sooner you have Members of Congress who might have 
been more fearful of the virus than others that may feel 
comfortable enough to actually build that relationship.
    Mr. Reschenthaler. Yeah. You have been talking a lot about 
Congress as the whole, but obviously you are the ranking member 
on House Admin. Could you testify as to how this has impacted 
House Admin. the committee itself?
    Mr. Davis. Well, I enjoyed Mr. Cole's comments on the 
Approps Committee being very bipartisan. I used to see that on 
House Administration. That has not been the case over the last 
two Congresses. It has been unfortunate. It has been much more 
partisan. And, frankly, I believe the pandemic itself plus the 
overuse of remote processes and proxy voting has really hurt my 
ability and Chairperson Lofgren's ability to work and interact 
together to make the House operate. I mean, there are things 
that so shouldn't be partisan that we deal with on a regular 
basis.
    And, frankly, at the beginning of last Congress, it started 
out much more bipartisan, but as the pandemic wore on and our 
disagreements in response and some of the legislative activity 
that we disagreed on, I think the partisanship was exacerbated 
by the remote processes and especially by the proxy voting, if 
I could not go talk to somebody in person during votes who 
might not be here.
    Mr. Reschenthaler. Thanks, Ranking Member Davis. I 
appreciate it. I yield back.
    The Chairman. Yeah. And I just want to say for the record, 
at least I hope I didn't--I wasn't critical of Republicans who 
voted by proxy in my opening statement. Although, I have to say 
that I do have a tough time getting my head around the fact 
that many who have voted by proxy signed on to a lawsuit saying 
this was unconstitutional. And so I get it that the rules of 
the game are the rules of the game, but if you think something 
is unconstitutional, how do you go ahead and then utilize it? 
But, anyway, I will grapple with that.
    Mr. Morelle. Okay. You are going to defer, and you will be 
the first person we go to for questions in the next panel.
    Mrs. Fischbach.
    Mrs. Fischbach. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    And, you know, I guess Mr. Reschenthaler started to touch a 
little bit on the freshmen, and since I am the only freshman--
and it looks like even on our panel, there is only a couple of 
freshmen who are going to testify.
    And, you know, Mr. McGovern, I think you touched on it when 
you said you met the moment. In your opening, you used that 
phrase in your opening statement. And I think--but I think that 
moment is in the past now, and I think we need to move forward.
    This body functioned for over 200 years without proxy 
voting, and I think we should go back to those traditions of 
having people come here, do what they need to do. You know, it 
has been obviously much more challenging for the freshman class 
to create those relationships, make those relationships. And, 
sad as it may be, the Rules Committee is probably the closest 
relationships I have had because we have been here in person 
and--no, and that was a joke, so I am just----
    The Chairman. Yeah, we are a family, the Addams family.
    Mrs. Fischbach. The Addams family, there you go. I love it. 
But it really,--you know, because we have probably met more in 
person or at least, you know, than any of my other committees, 
you know, I look--I sit on the Ag Committee and the Judiciary 
Committee. Judiciary Committee met a little more. But my 
relationship with people is that little box and getting--you 
know, and they get their 5 minutes, and that is about all I get 
to hear from them. And there isn't--you know, in many cases, 
Mr. Perlmutter, you mentioned there is, you know, discussion 
over Zoom, but not during the committee hearing. You know, it 
is a little more formal. It is a little more controlled.
    And so it is unfortunate, because my experience in the 
Minnesota legislature, I understand how important those 
relationships are. I understand that there is a lot that 
happens in the hallway just passing people by saying: Hey, you 
know, I have got a great bill. You should look into it and have 
your staff look into it.
    And we are missing that.
    And I really feel like it is so frustrating for the 
freshmen in many ways because they don't have that; they are 
not able to do that. And they will be at a huge disadvantage, 
and I think even into the future, I think this institution will 
suffer from the lack of relationships with that freshman class.
    And, you know, obviously, when we talk about, oh, you know, 
we have to miss votes, you have to miss votes, this is a full-
time--it is a full-time job, and we are here. And there are 
obviously very valid reasons why you have to miss votes, 
whether it be giving birth, whether it be, you know, caring for 
a sick child or going to see your parents, your, you know, 
elderly parents, whatever the case is.
    But I think Mr. Perlmutter touched on it, it is the voters 
that get to decide, and for over 200 years, the voters got to 
decide if a vote--if a reason to miss a vote was a valid 
reason. And I think--and I can't remember which of the 
testifiers mentioned she had had a child while she was in. I 
think the voters probably said, that is a pretty valid reason 
for missing a vote because they sent her back.
    So--and that is the way the institution was set up. And you 
do have to make those hard decisions when you have a family. I 
served in the Minnesota Senate when my kids were little, and 
you know what, I made some of those hard decisions. I missed 
votes. But I had to make those because of the profession that I 
had chosen, that I had been elected to the senate.
    And so I think that we need to put more trust in our voters 
to help us make those decisions, and we need to get back to the 
way this institution is supposed to be. It is supposed to be 
based on relationships. It is supposed to be based on those 
discussions we have, you know, with people across the aisle.
    And I, as a freshman, it saddens me that we have missed 
that, that we have missed that. Yes, it was a disastrous 
orientation because we--I mean, we couldn't even talk to the 
other freshmen. We had to sit, you know, further apart. We had, 
you know, masks on. And let me tell you, I introduced myself to 
the same people like eight times because they had on masks, and 
they all had the same hairdo. So it was just--it is very 
difficult, very difficult.
    And so I am--and maybe--Mr. Reschenthaler mentioned a few 
little things about the freshman class. But, Mr. Davis, maybe--
you know, you became kind of the, I don't know, the den father 
to the freshman class because you were the only----
    Mr. Perlmutter. No wonder there is such a problem.
    Mrs. Fischbach. Okay. It says something. See, this is why 
we can't have proxy voting because if he becomes the guy in 
charge of the freshman class, it is--but maybe you can--and I 
know that I am not the only freshman who has some of those 
frustrations, and so maybe you can talk a little bit more about 
the effects on this institution that it is going to have in the 
future and some of those difficulties that the freshmen have 
experienced, if there is more that you want to add to what you 
mentioned to Mr. Reschenthaler.
    Mr. Davis. I will be very quick because I know we have some 
others waiting. You know, I mentioned I think the process 
itself has led to more partisanship. I agree it has led to more 
en bloc votes. It has led to less relationship building. But, 
really, I think it goes down to the individuals not being able 
to serve their constituents as well when the normal processes 
return because it is going to be such a surprise. It is one of 
the things I tried to reiterate during orientation, but there 
are so many things coming at the freshmen at the time. And we 
are learning from that too as we move into planning for the 
next freshman class.
    But, in the end, I think your class above all, in my time 
in Congress and my time as a staff member, has sacrificed the 
most at being able to build those bipartisan relationships that 
transcend politics, transcend even, in my case the freshman 
classes, some who ran for President. You know, we are still 
friends. And those relationships were developed by having a 
drink after the day was over, that if we tried to do that at 
the Hyatt during COVID, the mask vigilantes would come flying 
around and say: Oh, you can't be here. You can't do this.
    That is where your class suffered the most, and I do 
believe that we, as House Administration, should develop some 
type of ongoing process, education about what the processes 
will look like when we return to normal so that it isn't such a 
surprise to you and your fellow classmates, both Republicans 
and Democrats because, again, that was in person.
    I was there in person every day for those orientation 
meetings and orientation events, and I feel a connection to 
your class even though you are a little more difficult to train 
than others. I don't know what type of breeder, you know----
    Mrs. Fischbach. Oh, Mr. Reschenthaler just told me you are 
his official mentor. Okay, now I know.
    Mr. Davis. That is his problem too, Ed.
    Mrs. Fischbach. Okay.
    Mr. Davis. Thank you.
    Mrs. Fischbach. But, you know, just--and appreciate the--a 
few laughs, but it really is, I think, a serious issue, and I 
do think that it is going to have long-term effects just given 
the issues that the freshmen had in developing those 
relationships.
    And, before I finish up, I did want to--I forget--I want to 
ask unanimous consent to enter the testimony, a letter from Mr. 
Thompson of Pennsylvania.
    The Chairman. Without objection.
    [The information follows:]
    Mrs. Fischbach. Thank you very much. And, with that, I 
yield back.
    The Chairman. Okay. Thank you.
    I want to thank you for your testimony. Thank you for being 
the last remaining person standing on this panel. I just want 
to just say before you leave, we talk about this as either/or. 
It either has to be this or that. I mean, there are nuances 
here that are worth discussing.
    And, again, going back to what Representative Sanchez said 
in her testimony, I mean, Congress has changed. In a lot of 
ways, including more women getting elected to Congress, and 
there are some realities that I think we need to be a little 
bit more considerate of.
    And I don't think constituents should be disfranchised 
because there is a natural disaster in your district or because 
somebody is ill. I think most of you do too, because people 
continue to vote by proxy on the Republican side as well. So 
there is some utility here. The question is, as we move 
forward, what do we keep and what don't we keep or do we keep 
nothing or do we keep at all. I mean, that is what we are 
trying to figure out here. And so I appreciate very much your 
testimony, and you are free to go.
    Oh, Mr. Neguse is with us here. Do you have questions of 
Mr. Davis or can we go to the next panel?
    Mr. Neguse. Yeah, just a quick question of Mr. Davis to 
underscore the point that you had made, Mr. Chairman. 
Obviously, as you all know, I am not there in-person. I am 
participating remotely because I tested positive for COVID 
earlier this week.
    And, to get to the question, I missed the top of the 
hearing, but, for Mr. Davis, is it your contention that there 
should be no exceptions, that we should just eliminate proxy 
voting in its entirety?
    Mr. Davis. Yes.
    Mr. Neguse. Okay. And so, I guess, I would query to you, 
and I suppose you have given this some thought, but, you know, 
this week there are 10 Members of Congress who have tested 
positive for COVID, who, like me, are unable to participate, 
but nonetheless are able to participate via remote voting or 
proxy voting, if you will.
    And I guess, what would you suggest to the 7 million people 
whom we collectively represent who would be deprived of the 
ability to, you know, opine on various different pieces of 
legislation that we are considering on the floor essentially 
because their representative happened to be diagnosed with this 
illness?
    Mr. Davis. Well, as I stated in my testimony, I would 
provide 200 years of precedent before this pandemic began and 
before this majority decided to implement proxy voting for the 
first time ever in American history. So we have got 200 years 
of evidence. I mean, there are hard decisions that have to be 
made, but we also have to look at COVID as a risk-management 
issue now.
    You have the Queen of England, who 95, I believe, was--came 
down and tested positive with COVID, asymptomatic, as I see--
and I hope you are too, Mr. Neguse. But there comes a time 
where the Queen of England was able to still conduct business 
while being infected. We have got to get to a point where we 
look at this virus and learn how to deal with it as a risk-
management issue because it is never going to be a zero-
tolerance issue. And proxy voting was established when there 
was a zero-tolerance mentality in dealing with COVID.
    And we have learned so much more. And what we have learned 
about proxy voting, Mr. Neguse, is that it has destroyed the 
fabric of the institution. It stopped a lot of bipartisan 
activity. It stopped a lot of interaction that I think is 
crucial and what our forefathers envisioned when they created 
the House of Representatives. So that is----
    Mr. Neguse. Well, look, I respect your opinion, obviously 
and enjoy working with you, Mr. Davis. I think the notion that 
it has destroyed the institution is a bit much. You know, 
certainly a lot of bipartisan agreement is still happening in a 
variety of the committees of jurisdiction and bipartisan 
agreements that we have been able to push through the floor.
    You know, obviously, I understand that you would like to 
see this practice eliminated, that others would like to see the 
practice reformed. I think I land in the latter category. But 
fundamentally, I don't--I think that that is a bridge too far 
to suggest that it somehow has sort of destroyed the entire 
institution.
    I also would say, I don't disagree with you regarding the 
risk tolerance question, but I think that is a different line 
of inquiry. From my perspective, simply because the precedent 
suggests that we haven't had remote voting or proxy voting in 
the past, that is not a reason alone to not have proxy voting 
today. And I, for one, would be devastated to deprive, you 
know, the minority of my star performance during the Rules 
Committee proceeding earlier this week simply because I was 
diagnosed with COVID.
    So I appreciate the opportunity to participate. I will 
yield back to the chairman.
    Mr. Davis. Got to be a Broncos fan.
    The Chairman. Yeah. I think we are all set. Thank you very 
much.
    Let me just say, just because we have been doing something 
for 200 years doesn't mean we should continue the same old, 
same old. The bottom line is, if that were our rationale, some 
of the people who are serving in this Congress wouldn't be 
here.
    So, in any event, I now want to call the next panel: 
Majority Leader Hoyer, Representative Castor, Representative 
Gallagher, Representative Roy, Representative Rose, 
Representative Biggs, Representative Takano, and Representative 
Bost.
    Mr. Hoyer is not here, so we will begin with Representative 
Castor.

    STATEMENT OF THE HON. KATHY CASTOR, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 
               CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA

    Ms. Castor of Florida. Well, good morning, members. 
Chairman McGovern, and Ranking Member Cole, and committee 
members, thank you very much for the opportunity to testify 
today. I want to----
    The Chairman. Order.
    Ms. Castor of Florida. It is wonderful to return to the 
Rules Committee. Thank you so much for the opportunity.
    I wanted to simply highlight some of the benefits that we 
have learned from holding remote hearings. We were forced to go 
to many of virtual and hybrid hearings out of necessity due to 
this global pandemic. But as we come out of the pandemic and 
move to the next phase, there is a lot that we have learned 
that we can now incorporate into the operations of the House of 
Representatives. And I want to highlight three benefits in 
particular.
    One, remote hearings gave us the ability to hear from a 
wider variety of Americans and witnesses during our committee 
meetings, and to hear from people who are underrepresented, who 
have never had the opportunity or cannot afford to travel to 
Washington, D.C., to provide testimony in front of a 
congressional committee.
    Two, because we were able to have remote and virtual and 
hybrid hearings, we reduced the carbon footprint across the 
Congress, across the country. That is a tremendous benefit.
    And, three, it provided significant cost savings and energy 
savings to the Congress, and to the nonprofit organizations, 
and the wide variety of Americans who want to have the ability 
to have input on--in the legislative process.
    So, first, the benefit of greater opportunities of a wider 
variety of Americans and a larger number of unrepresented 
groups to participate. Just think about the hearings that you 
have had in your committees where there were witnesses from 
farther flung states, there were witnesses from rural areas 
that typically would not have the ability to travel here; 
farmers, Tribal nations had the ability--greater ability to 
access the legislative process.
    Each of the 14 hearings that the Select Committee on the 
Climate Crisis held during the 117th Congress has included at 
least one remote witness. And this really added to the weight 
and depth, breadth of the testimony, everything we learned on 
both sides of the aisle to move forward. And I know you 
experienced that in your committees, especially the 
underrepresented groups, environmental justice communities, 
frontline communities, all--everyone who is underrepresented 
had a greater voice in the democratic process.
    Two, carbon pollution reduction. Remote witnesses also 
allowed us to reduce the carbon footprint because they didn't 
have to travel to Washington, D.C. And I just want to get these 
stats quickly into the record.
    As an example, three out of four witnesses for the Select 
Committee's remote hearing on July 15, 2021, would have needed 
to fly into the D.C. area to testify in the hearing in person. 
The three resided in Montgomery, Alabama; Los Angeles, 
California; and Flagstaff, Arizona. And based on the data that 
the committee gathered, these three round-trip, nonstop flights 
would have equated to a total of 1,894 kilograms of carbon 
dioxide. This is the equivalent to the emissions of 230,390 
smartphones, fully charged, over 2,000 pounds of coal burned, 
or 213 gallons of gasoline consumed. And those--this reflects 
just one hearing. Multiply that across all of the Committee's 
hearings, and all of the Congress, what a tremendous benefit in 
savings.
    Third, remote hearings allowed us and the witnesses, this 
broad cross-section of Americans, to reduce their travel costs 
and to reduce their energy costs, not just avoiding carbon 
pollution, but it saves people money. And isn't that critical 
at a time that we are dealing with coming out of this global 
pandemic, dealing with the global challenges of supply and 
demand, the higher cost that Putin's war of aggression now is 
exacerbating?
    We know that we can reduce demand for energy by allowing 
witnesses to Zoom in or Webex into our committee hearings. 
Again, a lot of expertise all across America.
    So, in closing, remote and hybrid hearings have really 
helped reduce the economic time and geographic barriers for 
witnesses. We have benefited from it. We have a wider cross-
section of experts and everyday Americans that we have been 
able to hear from.
    And, committee members, America is the leader in technology 
and innovation. Times have changed. Things have modernized, and 
that Congress shouldn't be left out. The American people 
shouldn't be left out. We can all benefit from it.
    Thank you very much. And I yield back my time.
    [The statement of Ms. Castor of Florida follows:]
    The Chairman. Thank you very much.
    I want to call our majority leader, distinguished Majority 
Leader Steny Hoyer, to testify. Welcome.

   STATEMENT OF THE HON. STENY H. HOYER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 
              CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MARYLAND

    Mr. Hoyer. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Oh, am I on? Can you hear me?
    As I listened to the previous panel, I thought to myself 
that--you will probably all remember, Ben Franklin turning to 
James Madison and arguing about whether we ought to zoom or 
not. The world has changed. Technology is extraordinary. And 
every business in America, every enterprise in America is 
utilizing technology to its benefit. I think that is what this 
is really about.
    But I do want to say at the outset--I am sorry that the 
ranking member of the House Administration has left--this is 
one of the more productive Congresses in which I have served, 
and this is my 20th Congress. And I am going to make a better 
case for that at some point in time. But this representation 
that somehow proxy voting has made this a less productive 
Congress, I think, is demonstrably untrue. And I will make that 
case, but not today. I know all of you are happy about that.
    A lot of talk about proxy voting. This House of 
Representatives is a relatively, perhaps, very unique body, 
because we have 435 people who come from every place in 
America: high risk, low risk, and every risk in between. And we 
gather together in a relatively small room for 435 people. So 
it was uniquely a place where transmission could be very much 
magnified.
    Doctor, I am not a medical doctor, but I think that is 
self-explanatory. And so in answer to an extraordinarily once-
a-century pandemic, we responded. And we responded in trying to 
make sure that we could keep Members, staff, press, visitors as 
safe as possible. We don't know what safe as possible is, but 
we made that effort. I think it was the right thing to do. The 
courts indicated we had the authority to do that, which did not 
surprise me, and we proceeded.
    And now the issue is, as we hopefully are passing through 
this pandemic, what do we do? During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. 
Chairman and members, much like the other legislatures around 
the world and like business across America, took steps to adapt 
our working to the challenge of social distancing, which we 
were advised to do. We took unprecedented measures to ensure 
that Members and committees could continue to do our jobs and 
serve the American people uninterrupted.
    I made the observation on the floor that my people voted 
for me; none of them, not a single one of them cared where I 
expressed their opinion, if it was going to be affected. They 
didn't care whether I voted from a machine on my side of the 
aisle, a machine on another side of the aisle, or from 
wherever. That was not in their minds. It was that I was 
available to express their opinion on a particular issue, which 
we have allowed Members to do, notwithstanding their risk 
aversion or the realities of our health environment.
    H. Res. 965, the 116th Congress, adopted measures like 
virtual committee hearings and meetings, as well as proxy 
voting and longer voting times on the floor. I think reasonable 
steps to take, from a health perspective. Those were big 
changes, which were accompanied by smaller changes, such as the 
Clerk's Office creating an eHopper. I haven't heard anything 
about that, where you can file a bill and you didn't have to 
go. By the way, probably a few of you know, and particularly 
Mrs. Fischbach. I didn't know what a hopper was, and I was 
president in the Maryland Senate for 12 years.
    A hopper is piece of furniture, and it has various levels, 
and you see it in the old Senate Chamber, but I thought a 
hopper was just a box. Why does somebody have to personally 
hand that--they can do it now electronically.
    The electronic filing of bills, the statements for the 
record, and the Chief Administrative Officer implementing the 
Quill system for electronically collecting Members' signatures, 
so you don't have to go from each office to office to get the 
actual signature.
    As a result of these adaptations, the House and its 
committees were able to meet safely and produce major 
legislation that helped Americans meet the challenge of the 
pandemic and address critical national needs over the past 2 
years. And I would say as an aside to my friends, the 
polarization has nothing to do with proxy voting. Nothing. 
Unfortunately, this is the most polarized Congress in which I 
have served.
    I came here in 1981. And I tell people I served on the 
Appropriations Committee. There were 13 of us on the Labor 
Health Committee. Eight Democrats, we were in charge, five 
Republicans. And what I tell people is you could put us 
together, throw us up in the air, and come down in random 
chairs and do a markup, and you would have been hard-pressed in 
1983 to say which was the Democrat and which was the Republican 
on the Labor Health Committee. Sil Conte from Massachusetts was 
the ranking member of that committee.
    Other acts we have taken include the enactment of the 
Families First Act and CARES Act, the American Rescue Plan, a 
central legislation to fund the government, prevent default of 
our obligations.
    I suggest to you that this comment about proxy voting only 
presumes the outcome would be different if, in fact, we 
precluded somebody from voting if they were sick if, per 
chance, they were absent. As was the case we just saw in our 
sister body, the United States Senate, when our former 
colleague, Ben Ray Lujan, had a stroke, and he couldn't come. 
Yes, the outcome would have been different, because it would 
have been then 50-49 on the other side. Should that be the 
case? Should those people in New Mexico not have been 
represented because he was fully cognizant, mentally able? He 
was not physically able for a period of time to come. Should we 
have said to them, Coloradans (sic), by act of happenstance, 
you will not be represented. I think not.
    We also, as the chairman pointed out, we passed the 
infrastructure bill, an extraordinary bill that I, frankly, 
think, with all due respect to my friend--and Tom Cole, I don't 
know off the top of my head, Tom, how you voted, but we only 
got 13 Republicans, 19 in the Senate. The percentage is 
radically different. Why? Because your leadership said don't 
vote for it. And then when voted for it, we talked about 
partisan. The 13 that did vote for it got criticized, and some 
even suggested removing them from their committees because they 
differed.
    During the time of these changes were put in place, the 
House passed--I won't mention the bills, but I will go into 
that at some point in time--as infection, hospitalization, and 
fatality rates have dropped, and as vaccination rates have 
risen, we have adapted by ending the practice of voting by 
group and reducing voting times on the floor. So we are moving 
towards what I think we all want, a shorter period of time.
    Now, let me just say as an aside that the defense bill had 
over 200 amendments on it. It is not unusual to have en bloc 
voting. We have always had en bloc voting, since I got here. 
Now, you do the math. Five minutes at 209 amendments. That is 
over a thousand minutes. A lot of time. As a practical matter, 
a body of 435 tries to accelerate. Doesn't do it perfectly. And 
as Mr. Cole pointed out, sometimes there is a bloc and you are 
not looking forward to them. And you get put in a position of--
and doing them all. Seriatim would be better, but it also would 
be very, very timely.
    Other measures such as the greater adoption of remote 
working tools ought to remain in place, in my opinion, Mr. 
Chairman, because we have seen how they help make the House 
more accountable, transparent, and efficient.
    While nothing can truly replace in-person work--and I want 
to emphasize that--the Speaker, myself, at the time we adopted 
the proxy voting, and Mr. McCarthy, all indicated in-person is 
better. I agree with that premise for the reasons Mr. Cole 
pointed out and also Mr. Perlmutter, I think, mentioned it. But 
given the technology that we have available to us in this 
extraordinary age in which we live, we can accommodate not 
being in person, even though that is the preferable, and we 
ought to promote that happening, including as the appropriation 
does and as you have done, Mr. Chairman, meetings in person.
    Virtual committee hearings have made it possible, however, 
to hear from a more diverse group of witnesses and experts, 
including those with disabilities, who find it difficult to 
travel to Washington in person. As a sponsor of the Americans 
with Disabilities Act, that is called a reasonable 
accommodation. As well as those who can't make it here because 
of work obligations or because they cannot afford to travel. 
Which means you can get experts from Europe, from Asia, from 
Australia, from other places to testify.
    Tools like the eHop and Quill, which I mentioned earlier, 
certainly ought to continue in use, Mr. Chairman, in my 
opinion. They are just a use of technology to do what we 
otherwise had to do by walking from office to office. They have 
been proven valuable to Members and staff.
    With regard to proxy voting, I see a number of cases in 
which it may be appropriate to continue having it as an 
option--not as a preference, not as a practice, but as an 
option, such as when Members may be ill, have to care for a 
sick loved one, or welcome a new child.
    There may also be future cases with national emergencies. 
We talked about Ukraine. I don't know that they don't vote by 
proxy, maybe you do, or by electronic device. But if your 
parliament is being bombed, it is probably a good thing to do, 
if you want to create a consensus, not to make sure that people 
have to go to some place that is being bombed and make them 
very vulnerable to being killed by a criminal thug called 
Putin.
    So I hope the committee will explore how proxy voting, now 
shown to be effective and constitutional, can be incorporated 
into the House's work so that no districts' constituents are 
left out of the full representation they deserve.
    I would reiterate, no constituent of mine in 41 years has 
ever asked me, where did you vote from? Did you vote from this 
machine, that machine, the other machine? Now, you will say, 
well, you are all in the same room. They don't care. What they 
care is Steny Hoyer stands up and expresses their views. That 
is what democracy is about. It is not about a place where you 
vote. It is about voting. It is about expressing their opinion, 
about representation.
    We ought to be prepared for any eventuality, such as if a 
new variant or virus has emerged that is deadlier than for 
which we do not now have a cure. The business of the House must 
be able to continue uninterrupted. Technology allows that to 
happen in ways that our Founders had no concept of.
    I want to thank this committee. I want to thank its 
chairman. I want to thank its ranking member, who I think is 
one of our best members and who works very hard at 
collegiality. And I don't have any doubt, Tom, you walked over 
there and talked to Ms. Pingree and said, look--but, very 
frankly, we can do that on the phone. We can do it as Mr. 
Perlmutter said. I find Zoom an extraordinary technology that 
is not in-person but is like in-person, because you can 
interrupt, you can see the smile, you can see the frown, you 
can see the physical gestures.
    And I want to thank this committee, again, and the chairman 
and all the members, for the work that you do. We have 
contended with this pandemic and had to adapt the workings of 
this institution to meet its challenge. We have done that. 
There has been no interruption. And as I say, at a later date, 
I will make the case that this is one of the most productive, 
not--to say it is unproductive is to ignore what we have done 
for the American people.
    In particularly want to thank Chairman McGovern for his 
leadership, as well as Staff Director Don Sisson, with whom I 
have had the pleasure to work. It has been an honor working 
closely with you in this effort, and I hope we can continue to 
find ways to ensure that the people's House, the people's House 
represents the people, whatever the circumstances may be, and 
that their voice can be heard. And it has been heard on every 
vote.
    Whether Republicans voted proxy, yes, they may not have 
been there, but the voice of the people they represented was 
heard. When somebody said, by proxy, I vote aye or nay, the 
voices of that district were heard. How much better that is 
than, by happenstance, the people of New Mexico's voice not 
being heard on an important issue because their Member had a 
stroke. Not disabled, his mental acuity never lost. That was 
good for our democracy, it was good for our country, and it was 
good for the Senate and the House.
    Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    [The statement of Mr. Hoyer follows:]
    The Chairman. Thank you very much. And I know that you need 
to meet with the Taoiseach.
    Mr. Hoyer. I do.
    The Chairman. And I hope that we----
    Mr. Hoyer. I understood that the Taoiseach had been 
positive.
    The Chairman. Oh, so we won't be meeting with the Taoiseach 
then.
    Mr. Hoyer. No, but our President may be here.
    Mr. Cole. I know the gentleman has to leave, but I just 
wanted to make one----
    Mr. Hoyer. And I thank you for giving me the opportunity to 
leave because I know that is not your practice.
    Mr. Cole. Absolutely. Of course. I just know it was an 
omission that you didn't mention Kelly Dixon with Don Sisson at 
the same time.
    Mr. Hoyer. Well, I love Kelly. I don't know whether that 
embarrassed her----
    Mr. Cole. She is watching on her television in a room.
    Mr. Hoyer [continuing]. Or gets her in trouble, but as a--
--
    Mr. Perlmutter. She is Zooming in.
    Mr. Cole. Yeah. I just wanted to give you the opportunity 
to go on record.
    Mr. Hoyer. I am so thankful you gave me that because, let 
me tell you, Kelly and I, when we--when she was working, she 
was--Kelly, did that really mess it up that I said I loved you? 
I am sorry if that was, you know, damning you with faint play.
    But in any event, thank you Tom for giving me--Mr. Cole for 
giving me that opportunity.
    This committee--and I will tell you, I am so glad you 
brought it up, because we get pretty contentious on the floor, 
but there was never a time when I could not--when Kelly was on 
the floor and helping to manage the floor when I couldn't go 
over to Kelly and talk to her and say, hey, this is the deal. 
And, of course, Mr. Cole and I are good friends, and so we have 
had that opportunity to do that as well.
    The partisanship that we confront and the polarization is a 
far bigger issue than whether we vote by proxy or vote in 
person. This polarization is hurting our country. This 
polarization where we are not thinking about the substance but 
the politics is hurting America. And the fact at a time of war, 
we are war. We are not physically on the field with the 
Ukrainians, but we ought to do everything we possibly can to 
make sure that they can meet this enemy and defeat this enemy. 
And we need to be united in that effort. And we ought to all 
remind ourselves that we are Americans. We may be Democrats, we 
may be Republicans, we may be something else, but we are 
Americans. And Zelenskyy was right; we are the leaders. We are 
the leaders of the free world. And if we sound by our division 
an uncertain trumpet, the world will be a lesser place.
    Thank you very much.
    The Chairman. Thank you very much.
    Mr. Gallagher.

   STATEMENT OF THE HON. MIKE GALLAGHER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 
              CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF WISCONSIN

    Mr. Gallagher. I would like to make a slightly different 
argument than some of my colleagues. I don't think this is 
primarily about spending time together, I don't think it is 
about partisanship. I don't think it is about technology, as 
the majority leader argued. I think it is just about the truth. 
Because when you proxy vote--I have never proxied--buy my 
understanding is you have to sign a piece of paper that says, I 
am unable to physically attend proceedings in the House Chamber 
due to the ongoing public health emergency, i.e., coronavirus. 
That is what you are signing your name too, right? There is no 
dispute about that. It is clear in the language.
    So we know, notwithstanding Mr. Neguse, who I think is the 
exception that proves the rule today, the over, overwhelming 
majority of Members proxy voting are lying when they sign this 
piece of paper. We have all heard the anecdotes of people going 
to fundraisers--Democrats and Republicans, by the way. I am not 
saying only the other side has abused this. Let me prove this 
to you mathematically why this is a massive lie.
    The average number of proxy votes on a normal day in 
Congress, a full day like today, is about 68, if you crunch the 
numbers. Magically, on fly-in and fly-out days, those numbers 
skyrocket to around a hundred. So what happened? Are people 
getting COVID on Mondays, Tuesdays, or Thursday, Fridays, but 
not Wednesdays? No. They are abusing proxy voting so they can 
have a longer weekend, right? Because it is an inconvenience to 
come to D.C., and in the process, signing their name to a lie 
on this piece of paper.
    Now, if you want to make a different argument, right--I 
actually think Mr. Perlmutter has made a high-integrity 
argument. He openly says he wants a more libertarian system 
where everyone can proxy vote. I disagree, but that is an 
entirely different thing. Then you need to advance a proposal 
whereby people can sign their name saying, I need to proxy vote 
because of X, Y, Z, not because of COVID. Because it is not 
about COVID.
    Indeed, we just had at least four Members of Congress on 
this panel admit, against interest, that it is not about COVID; 
it is about birthdays, graduation parties, it is about the 
birth of children, it is about climate change, it is about 
strokes. That is a different thing. So I actually concede the 
point to the chairman that--I am not suggesting proxy voting is 
causing this unprecedented polarization, if that is even true 
that we are unprecedented in our polarization. I think it is 
exacerbating a lack of trust in the institution because so many 
Members are lying.
    I mean, put differently, right, how--one argument was made 
that we are disenfranchising voters if their Members can't 
proxy. Are you not disenfranchising voters if you are lying to 
them? Or someone made an appeal to the integrity of the 
institution, and if you proxy vote, that we are going to be 
able to have more options and will retain the integrity of the 
institution in the modern age. How can you maintain the 
integrity of the institution if you are institutionalizing 
lies? It makes no sense.
    So I am happy to have the different argument about proxy 
voting for other reasons. I will still oppose it. And if you 
put forward that proposal, I suspect you would lose that vote. 
But there is no question it is obvious and inarguable, to the 
point of being self-evident now, that people are abusing proxy 
voting. And every single day we are countenancing scores of 
lies by our colleagues. If nothing else, we have to change what 
is on this piece of paper and stop lying.
    And, with that, I yield.
    [The statement of Mr. Gallagher follows:]
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Mr. Roy.

 STATEMENT OF THE HON. CHIP ROY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS 
                    FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS

    Mr. Roy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And let me associate myself with the remarks of Mr. 
Gallagher wholeheartedly as one of the most frustrating things 
about this entire experience is watching my colleagues 
blatantly lie when signing a piece of paper. And we all know it 
is true. We all know it. And we see it every day, but we just 
kind of countenance it and say, oh, go, yeah, go to a 
fundraiser. Good for you. Or one story was voting from a--
somebody was out on an interview in a car in the parking lot 
while there is somebody proxy voting for him in here. And, 
again, both sides of the aisle. Let me make it perfectly clear, 
both sides of the aisle.
    You know, look, we are talking about a number of things. 
And my name was invoked earlier. I will only respond to it 
briefly about the institution being broken. And the majority 
leader has referenced this; otherwise, I wouldn't go down this 
road too much because this is about proxy. But the institution 
is broken. And a lot is made of so-called procedural votes and 
that it is somehow delaying the institution or causing harm. I 
mean, well, keep in mind that there are limited tools that you 
have when you are in the minority, but in particularly when you 
are not a chairman, when you are particularly not on the Rules 
Committee, or particularly you are not on--you are not the 
majority leader, right? So there are limited rules you have.
    And so, last week, for example, when I am sitting with my 
staff watching a vote being called for a voice vote for 
basically $16 billion worth of continuing resolution that I 
didn't bless, and which most people knew in my party and, 
generally speaking, it is not like I am shy about it, that that 
is not something I would agree to by voice vote. Yeah, I was 
frustrated that our rights weren't protected and that we didn't 
have a roll call vote on that. So what did I do? I did force 
two more procedural votes. Why? Because that is about all I got 
in my arsenal.
    I went down and talked to Keith on the floor. Said, Keith, 
you know, I am sorry, I was trying to get to Philadelphia. I 
ended up withdrawing the last one out of some sort of 
deference. But we have limited tools in our arsenal to say, 
protect our rights, Representative. We are talking about the 
institution. We are talking about disenfranchising our voters.
    What is the ultimate disenfranchisement of voters? The lack 
of any power of any one Member of Congress, because it has all 
been handed over to a handful, a handful of people in the 
majority and minority and the leadership offices, and/or in the 
Rules Committee, to make decisions about what we vote on.
    We get a 2,700-page bill at 2 o'clock in the morning and to 
vote on the rule the next morning? 2,700 pages with 5,000 
earmarks and $10 billion. $100 billion of increased spending. 
Massive complex pieces of language and 2,700 bills my staff is 
pouring over in the middle of the night, just trying to figure 
out what we are even looking at, right? That is no way to do 
business. So if we are going to talk about the institution 
being broken, let's start there.
    You know, I heard--the majority leader said, we are at war. 
Now, he kind of tweaked that a little bit after he said we are 
at war, about standing with the people in Ukraine and so forth. 
We haven't declared war. That is a constitutional requirement. 
We have not declared war.
    One of the best conversations I have had in this building 
was a building downstairs, two floors down, 2 years ago, with 
three Democrats, three Republicans, and--well, I might as well 
say Justin, because I was going to say an Independent, because 
he was the only Independent--talking about the authorizations 
of the use of military force. Twenty years in to authorization 
of the use of military force. And that conversation, over a 
beer, in person, resulted in a joint op-ed among the seven of 
us, raising questions about 20-year authorizations of the use 
of military force.
    But I think that is a really important thing we just saw 
here talking about this body. We are at war. That is a very big 
statement. That is a debatable statement, one we ought to be 
debating.
    We talk about, you know, being productive, and there is 
some debate about the productivity. I would argue productivity 
for leadership in the Rules Committee--and I do want to 
appreciate the chairman having this ability for us to come 
speak. It is important, and I genuinely thank you for it. But 
productivity by whom? Productivity by a handful is not the 
people's House. And here we sit, and we talk about, you know, 
whether this proxy policy is further breaking the institution.
    I heard the word extremely polarized. Well, I mean, when 
the Secretary of Treasury and the Vice President duel, maybe we 
will be as polarized as sometimes in our past. Yes, we are 
polarized. We have had a lot of differences over in our 
history.
    But in this point here with Mr. Gallagher at the fraudulent 
certification, I do agree that that is disenfranchising and 
that it is causing distrust in the institution. But, you know, 
one of the best things that I have been able to do in here is 
work with my friend Dean Phillips on the PPP Flexibility Act. 
Again, backbencher, Freedom Caucus Conservative, Dean Phillips, 
we are able to get something done on a bipartisan basis in the 
middle of COVID. But we did that because we are able to get to 
know each other and sit down and have that beer and sit down 
and know each other.
    We break down the human interactions when we blow up the 
whole point of us coming together as Congress. As somebody 
talked about earlier, the definition of Congress is us coming 
together and representing the people.
    The Constitution. And sorry, I have had to look at notes 
because we have been here for so long. But the fact is we all 
take an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States. 
We do. And I believe that we all, therefore, have an obligation 
to carefully examine the merits of the constitutional question 
raised by proxy voting. It is a legitimate, constitutional 
question. We haven't had any long significant hearings on it. I 
am sure my friend from Maryland would love to have in-depth 
conversations about this. I suspect we disagree on this point. 
But at least we ought to have that in-depth debate about the 
core constitutional question.
    And maybe the Speech and Debate Clause protects what I 
believe is unconstitutional proxy voting. Obviously, the 
Supreme Court denied cert, deferring to essentially us, right? 
To kind of--they punt, essentially. So here we are, and there 
is a question. I think we have an obligation to defend the 
Constitution.
    It is my perspective that it is, in fact, unconstitutional 
for us to engage in proxy voting. I think that the Constitution 
is pretty clear on it. I think if you read the text of the 
Constitution, words like ``meeting,'' ``assemble,'' 
``attendance,'' ``present,'' ``absent,'' ``recess,'' 
``sitting,'' ``seat,'' it clearly requires a Member of Congress 
to be actually present in the House or the Senate Chamber.
    I understand technology has changed. Well, then let's amend 
the Constitution. Let's have a debate about it. But I believe 
the Constitution clearly believed that we should be--or 
articulated we should be present.
    Quorum requirements. The same thing. The majority of each 
shall constitute a quorum, and blah, blah, blah, may be 
authorized to compel the attendance of absent Members.
    If you go look at the text and the history and 
understanding of what a quorum is, presence matters. The yeas 
and nays requirement. Right? When you get down to the desire of 
one-fifth of those present be entered in the journal, it was 
contemplating presence. And I understand there could be some 
debates about what presence means and whether you can establish 
presence in a different form. I don't believe that is what we 
agreed to in the Constitution when we were establishing these 
things.
    Nondelegation principle. We the People, right? We are 
formed on ``We the People.'' All the legislative powers herein 
granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States 
which shall consist of a Senate and the House of 
Representatives.
    I understand we can set our rules. I understand that we can 
come up with ways to represent We the People differently. But 
the contemplation is that we are not delegating our vote to 
another Member.
    When we talk about remote voting, we can have that debate, 
but this changes the entire point. We have last-minute changes 
on the floor. And we have got these rules in place that says, 
well, your staffer has to tell you the specific vote on that 
vote. I don't know how it works because I have never proxy 
voted. But I know there is some rules in place to try to 
protect, but you are changing the nature of the institution 
when you hand your voting card off to somebody else. And that 
is, effectively, what we are doing.
    I could go a little bit more into that. And I will only 
address the question on the constitutional issues raised about 
certain Members being pulled off of the litigation. And people 
have talked about that. And so, ultimately, it was the minority 
leader and myself on the litigation in the end, after having 
more Members on it at the beginning. And in part, that was just 
to clarify and simplify who was on the case. And we all know 
the facts, we have seen the stuff, that there were some Members 
that had been on the original litigation that ultimately proxy 
voted.
    Now, I would say, well, why is that? I wouldn't have, with 
all due respect to my Republican colleagues who are on the 
litigation and pulled off. I think that was wrong.
    But the flip side is, is the pressure. Okay. What is done 
when we change the institution? Let me give you an example of a 
vote.
    I was sitting in Fredericksburg, Virginia, waiting while we 
were going through all of the transportation votes last fall, 
and we were debating. Remember, every Friday, we would have 
these ridiculous sit-and-wait sessions, wondering when the heck 
we were going to vote? And it was Friday afternoon. I had 
committed months prior to speaking at the University of 
Virginia, my alma mater, and I was supposed to be there. And 
they had put out all the advertising, and there is a big thing, 
and I had committed to do it.
    So I am sitting in Fredericksburg, Virginia, at a 
Starbucks, because I was just having to figure out, am I going 
to Charlottesville or am I going back to D.C., waiting for the 
powers that be to tell me when we were going to vote on a bill 
I knew I would vote no on, but the vote might be close. But I 
am not going to hand over my vote to someone else, and Keith 
knew this on the floor. And I said, Keith, well, can you let me 
know as soon as possible. Leadership team knew it, and they 
were trying to--hey, well, we might need you here for the vote.
    And my point is just, I had a whole lot of proxy voting 
Members who didn't give a crap about where they were that day 
because they would hand off their vote to someone else. There 
was immense pressure on a lot of Members to say, well, you 
know, we are doing this tug of war about how we are going to 
run the place. And it makes it a lot easier to force votes 
Friday night at whatever, without having any advanced notice, 
if half the damn body is voting by proxy.
    So I am sitting at a Starbucks and, finally, Keith gave me 
the green light, we are voting on some random bill that wasn't 
the actual transportation bill. And I was like, fine, I will 
skip it. My constituents will forgive me for knowing that I 
would have voted no on whatever that ridiculous vote was that 
we voted on that night. So that is the question.
    And I would just say--I know I want to move on to other 
colleagues, but I just want to offer one more thought here is 
that what we do here is important. But I think sometimes we 
have a heightened sense of our own importance. There is 435 of 
us. There is 535, if we count the Senate. At the end of the 
day, this country is going to plod along, and we are all going 
to come and go, and we are all going to be pushing up daisies 
soon enough. We are just Members of Congress. And there is 330 
million Americans. And we act like, oh, my gosh, this is the 
most important thing, and we got to be here all day long.
    Put your vote in the record how you would have voted. And 
if it was that important of a vote, then give up whatever that 
thing is, sacrifice for the good of the country, and get your 
butt to Washington and vote. I mean, Ron Wright traveled across 
the country in the last weeks of his life, ravages of cancer, 
because he knew he couldn't get on the airplane, and it was 
brutal for him. But he got in a car and drove across the 
country. And I just think, when we think about what we are 
doing here--my son is back here and, clearly, you know, for all 
of everything we are talking about. But my son is back here. Do 
you know how many things I miss? I miss them all the time. I 
mean, I heard the testimony earlier about giving birth and 
having family members--how many things have you sacrificed, 
right? But I do it for him. So when I miss the baseball game, 
when I miss school, when I miss the event, I am doing it for 
him, I am doing it for my daughter, I am doing it for my wife. 
When my wife is sitting at home dealing with the stuff she is 
dealing with. When the freezer is freezing, and the freeze 
comes in Texas, and the hot water heater is not working, and I 
am here. Right? Those things are all hard. But it is our job. 
It is our obligation. And if you can't do it, think about not 
running again. Think about resigning. Thinking about giving it 
to someone else.
    There are 750,000 people in Texas 21. I ain't that 
important. I am just not. I mean, at the end of the day, our 
job is what is important. And I believe that the Constitution 
is strengthened, our Republic is stronger if we are here in 
person, and we are following the constitutional order. And if 
we want to change that, we should debate on an amendment, and 
we should vote on it.
    And, with that, I will yield back.
    [The statement of Mr. Roy follows:]
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    And I know Ms. Castor has to go. Let me just thank you for 
your testimony. And also, thank you for reminding us that--
again, these are not either/or situations. Allowing for remote 
committee hearings doesn't mean every committee hearing has to 
be remote. You can meet like this but have somebody testify 
from across the world and be able to provide information. And I 
think most people have thought that--I have heard from 
Republicans and Democrats--have thought that was a useful 
thing. But thank you so much for your testimony.
    I am now going to go to Representative Biggs.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. ANDY BIGGS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS 
                   FROM THE STATE OF ARIZONA

    Mr. Biggs. Thank you, Chairman. Thanks for holding this 
hearing. I appreciate it. I think it is an important topic.
    I noticed that the Ranking Member Cole mentioned more than 
once the culture of this body and the impact of proxy voting on 
the culture of this body. I agree with him. The culture has 
been impacted. And, you know, before I speak further, I just 
got to say this, I am reminded of Mo Udall, who was a longtime 
Congressman from the town I grew up in. And he used to say, 
Everything that needs to be said has been said, just not by 
everyone yet.
    So I feel like I have got--I am going to be batting cleanup 
for when the bases have been cleared. So I am going to--I have 
got to make my----
    Mr. Perlmutter. [Inaudible.]
    Mr. Biggs. Oh, Bost, didn't even see you there, pal.
    Anyway, I just want to cover a number of these items 
quickly. They may be repetitive to you, but they are important 
to get out. I mean, I think what Mr. Roy just mentioned 
actually gets to a point I was going to make that there is a 
distinction, quite frankly, between the quorum and the proxy 
vote. And the deal is we have decided we are going to count 
whoever proxies as part of our quorum. And the constitutional 
requirement seems to be very, very clear that physicality is 
necessary to constitute a quorum in order to conduct business.
    And I am reminded of the very first--the very first 
Congress when it came together. They waited 30 days, 30 days 
before they could get an actual physical group of a majority 
into Congress to actually conduct business. And I was also 
reminded when the ranking--not the ranking, the majority leader 
was talking about he is kind of making a snarko about, you 
know, Zoom. You know, Franklin talking to Madison about Zooming 
in. That was kind of interesting, kind of funny. But the 
reality is it actually painted the picture exactly the opposite 
of the point he was trying to make, and that is this: If there 
was a time that proxy voting should have been authorized, it 
would have been when people literally had to travel for 2 and 3 
weeks to get there and stay there and miss item after item of 
their home lives for months.
    Why didn't they allow proxy voting then? Because it was so 
important to get together as a Congress, as someone defined 
Congress earlier today, where you actually meet, you actually 
have dialogue, you have conversation, you move together. I will 
give you an example. Just give you a couple of anecdotes here.
    When I was first in, I won't get into the fact that the 
leadership took my bill away from me, it was my bill that 
passed. But what happened is, I negotiated it--I negotiated it 
with the Democrats. And so when that bill passed, it was--it 
was the substance of my bill, under somebody else's name, that 
I worked my tail off, and it was a bipartisan bill. That never 
would have happened if I couldn't have gone to talk to people. 
I talked to Mr. Perlmutter about that bill.
    Mr. Perlmutter. I voted for your bill.
    Mr. Biggs. Yes, you did doggone it. And I appreciate it to 
this day, and so do Americans.
    The point is we were able to get together and negotiate 
these things out, which is missing. I know contrary, you have 
created a warm relationship with Representative Timmons over 
Zoom. Imagine how warm it would be if you guys were sitting 
side by side and in person. I mean, that is a huge distinction. 
It deals with the culture of the body again.
    And so--and then we move into this notion of the votes. I 
don't mind fifteen, five, two, two, two votes. Those are 
fantastic. We are still on the floor, we can still talk.
    But you know what? I will give you an example of what 
happened just yesterday. I voted on the first bill, and I said, 
oh, I got this errand, I have to run off campus. I had time 
after I voted to go down, pick up my car, bring it up, park in 
front of this building, get out, go back up and have 10 more 
minutes to wait for the next bill. Then I voted, walked out to 
my car, drove across town, did my business, came back, had 15 
minutes to wait. That is--I am not--Congress is not designed to 
be efficient, but that kind of takes it to the outer limits of 
inefficiency. And it also negates some of what we do in 
Congress.
    And I have talked--I mean, everybody's talked about this. I 
will reiterate what Mr. Roy was talking about and what Mr. 
Gallagher was talking about. This document that people have 
signed, even though I have never voted proxy, I never voted 
proxy, even though my name was omitted from the lawsuit, also 
over my objection. That happens from time to time. But the 
reality is, when I--when I read the rules again in preparation 
for this--and I think the chair was right. I think you guys did 
try to put some safeguards there. But this document is pretty 
clear. You are going to be talking about of--of you are not 
there because of the COVID. And that hasn't happened. And I 
will give you an idea to understand it.
    A study was done and released just a couple of weeks ago. 
You have individuals that have voted more than 400 times by 
proxy. More than 400 times. I will tell you, I was very 
surprised about this, because there is a friend of mine on the 
other side of the aisle and rarely here, rarely here. In fact, 
I think he has been here six times in his Congress, six times. 
And I thought, that person has voted by proxy more than anybody 
else. Had to. Three hundred times plus. Top five but not number 
one, because number one is over 400.
    And I just--I am trying to understand how we sanction this. 
And I know that the chair is looking for ways, and he has 
mentioned Representative Escobar's--maybe you can find a 
medium--a middle ground. I don't know how you get to the middle 
ground because you have a quorum issue that I think we have 
violated the Constitution on. I think the Supreme Court punted 
on that, and they sent it back to us.
    But I will just--I don't want to take too much more time, 
because I feel like I am saying so much, but I will just ask 
this last question. We are engaged in public service. Every one 
of us, every one of us gave up something to be here. We 
continue to give up something. And my question for you is, why 
are you trying to take the sacrifice out of public service? And 
this--and when the majority leader talks about it, his 
rationale was it is easier, technology is easier, and so we 
should implement it now. I would just suggest to you that does 
not, that does not, that is not the sound rationale necessary 
to eradicate 230 years of practice.
    And so, with that, I will yield back.
    [The statement of Mr. Biggs follows:]
    The Chairman. Mr. Bost.

 STATEMENT OF THE HON. MIKE BOST, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS 
                   FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS

    Mr. Bost. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And I am--there are a few things that I may repeat, but I 
am going to go at a different angle because, you know, as the 
ranking member for the VA Committee, I am going to talk about 
some things that have happened in the VA Committee while doing 
this virtual thing.
    And, you know, I am proud of being on the VA Committee. I 
am proud of the fact that I am an old jarhead marine, father 
and grandfather of a marine, and I take serious the work that 
we are doing. But we don't do our jobs well on the Veterans' 
Affairs Committee when we are doing it virtually. And let me 
give you an example of that.
    You know, we have done our jobs but not well, in part, due 
to the limited virtual work. And let me tell you that the VA 
Committee has been stricter than many other committees. Where 
they went to a hybrid, we refused not to in our rules, by the 
majority. And we--it lasted for quite some time. And even at 
the point when we were voting on some very, very, very serious 
issues, vaccines were wide--were available, cases were down, 
but we still wouldn't return in the VA Committee. So, you know, 
that is the rules that each individual committee person or 
chairman can set.
    But during one markup, we were spending tens of billions of 
additional taxpayer dollars, and some of our members, one, 
could not be heard, therefore, their vote didn't count or it 
interrupted the vote. Or some of them couldn't be seen on 
camera, but they could be heard, which interrupted the vote, by 
the rules. But yet we continued to--down this path for a very, 
very long time.
    And I know that Chairman Takano had to leave. And these are 
all things he and I have discussed over and over and over 
again, and the complaints and concerns that we had.
    Now, someone said in one of the additional talking points 
earlier of the carbon footprint that we are saving. Well, I 
don't know, have any of you noticed that a lot of the people 
are actually putting a pretty solid carbon footprint because 
they are doing it while driving around in their vehicles? Even 
so much so that, at one time, we had someone driving on a lake 
with their boat, to the point that the chairman--that that 
chairman at that time of the Transportation Committee actually 
said on record, Is he on a boat? Is he driving his boat? I 
don't think that actually helps the carbon footprint that much. 
I am sorry. I think that--you know, the concerns that I see 
there.
    And let me also say this. It is really wild because there 
are three of us at this table that have never voted proxy, that 
until we were removed, stayed on the lawsuit. I have never 
voted proxy. I believe my constituents sent me here to vote for 
them, and I believe that. Now, you may disagree, but I believe 
that. I believe it is our job to be here.
    I spent 20 years in the State legislature, 20 years. After 
I got here, I actually had a staffer from the State legislature 
that called me, and he goes, Hey, Mike, we were looking 
something over. Do you realize how many votes you missed in 20 
years? Now, understand, I had children born, I had 
grandchildren born, I had--I said, no, how many? He said none. 
I said that is amazing, because I sure didn't know it.
    But I have missed votes while I am here, since I have been 
here. Matter of fact, I had one opponent that actually brought 
up the fact that I had missed several votes, and I couldn't 
figure out why. The opponent felt pretty bad because I looked 
back, and it was actually the week that we buried my mother. 
So, you know, there are those times that you can't be here.
    But I do agree with the fact that I don't think it is 
constitutional for us to cast these votes. We can have that 
debate, and we should have that debate, if we want to change 
it. But this being present--and then when we do the--when we 
did the vote first off to just be present, how is it that we 
can vote present by proxy? Isn't that kind of go wrong on the 
definition in the Webster Dictionary? I think it kind of 
clashes. And there are some--there is some real problems with 
that.
    And I know we have all talked about it here, and I don't 
want to belabor it, but it is time that we are to a point that 
we should go back to operating this House. I know there is new 
technology. That is fine. I have lived through the fact that, 
you know, when the State legislature--good heavens, I can 
remember we went supposedly paperless, and that is when we got 
laptops. And, of course, we still burn through just as much 
paper.
    But there is a time that the Constitution and, truly, the 
history of this institution should be held up in the fact that 
this is what we have done. I know that it is a pandemic. I 
understand. And I know that technology wasn't around during the 
last pandemic, and they actually missed several months of not 
being able to get quorum. I understand that. But we do have a 
tradition of being here, even when our Capitol is under attack. 
It was done--when the Capitol was burning, they met down the 
street.
    I think it is vitally important that we get back to really 
operating this House in a way that is traditional. And I 
believe that there has been a lot of problems that have been 
caused by doing this. And I appreciate the people who have had 
it. Remember, I was out 2 weeks ago, and I did what I could do, 
but I didn't vote.
    Again, Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to witness 
before you today, and I yield back.
    [The statement of Mr. Bost follows:]
    The Chairman. I appreciate you being here.
    Let me again say for the record, I have never voted by 
proxy either. I wrote the rule--but I have been lucky, right? I 
didn't get COVID. If I had COVID, I would have voted by proxy 
because that is what it was there for. I think if one of my 
kids had COVID, I think that--and I don't know--and, again, I 
am going to the issue that Mr. Gallagher raised.
    Look, I don't police every Member of Congress to find out 
are they really telling the truth or are they not? Those who 
have not been, we know about them, in large part because the 
press have recorded it. They have to deal with their 
constituents as to whether or not it was an appropriate use of 
that. But for me, I have followed the letter, every word of 
that. I have missed votes because I had to go to an event at 
the White House or I had to go to some other event, and I 
missed the vote because I thought that I had a special 
obligation--because this thing came out of this committee--to 
say that we are interpreting this the way it was intended.
    So, the issue, obviously, is do we--for those who want to 
keep some form of it--do you find better ways of making sure 
that people cannot misuse it? Are there more checks and 
balances in place? Do you limit it to only certain things? I 
mean, that is a question that ought to be talked about.
    In terms of the constitutionality, I am not a 
constitutional scholar, you are, so you can talk about that. 
But, a court case was filed, it went to the Supreme Court, and 
the Supreme Court did not come out on the side of those who 
said it was unconstitutional. But if you believe it is 
unconstitutional, if you believe it is unconstitutional----
    Yeah.
    Mr. Roy. They didn't grant cert.
    The Chairman. Right, okay.
    Mr. Roy. Different.
    The Chairman. Well, I will let him--but if you believe it 
is unconstitutional, again, it is mind-boggling to me that you 
would utilize it. But in any event, that is obviously the case 
here.
    And going back to what Ms. Castor talked about, about 
hybrid hearings or you being able to utilize technology in the 
hearing room, I think there is value to that. I know the 
majority leader mentioned President Zelenskyy, but you could 
have--I mean, you can conceivably have President Zelenskyy 
testify before the Foreign Affairs Committee or the Defense 
Committee from Ukraine remotely. I mean, that is a good thing--
I think that is something we ought to think as something we 
want to preserve.
    Obviously, as the public health emergency is moving in a 
direction that we all hope it continues to go in where we no 
longer have one, my hope is that more and more chairs will say 
we need--you got to meet in person. But I will say, I continue 
to believe that what we did at a very challenging time saved 
lives here, and it enabled us to operate and be able to move 
things that needed to be moved.
    And as I said before, in 1918, they had to get everything 
done by unanimous consent. And let me say this, let me preface 
this by saying, I love everybody here, right? But getting 
unanimous consent is almost impossible. Getting unanimous 
consent to have a glass of water is almost impossible here. 
That is just the reality. I am not passing judgment, I am just 
saying it is the reality.
    And so for us to be able to have responded to this pandemic 
the way we did, I think this was necessary. And so I continue 
to feel that this was the right thing to do. And I think the 
point of this hearing is to hear from people. And we have heard 
from everybody, from Mr. Perlmutter to those who want this 
totally done away with and everything in between. And what we 
need to do is figure out how do we proceed forward?
    Yes, Mr. Roy.
    Mr. Roy. Mr. Chairman, may I address the 1918 point real 
quick on----
    The Chairman. Yeah.
    Mr. Roy [continuing]. The unanimous consent? The other 
point to remember--and I feel the need to speak on behalf of my 
friend from Kentucky, Thomas Massie, who stood on the floor of 
the House, not pleased that we were going to proceed by using 
voice vote to move a $2 trillion bill. And we can debate that. 
And understand the timing of it. But the Constitution requires 
one-fifth, right, in order to be able to have the numbers there 
to force the roll call vote.
    So there is a mechanism by which the overwhelming majority 
can say, you know what, we will do this by voice. There is a 
mechanism to do that without consent. So you don't have to do 
it by consent. You can do it by voice. And you can say, look, 
unless you got a fifth of the body saying no, no, no, no, no, 
we dang well better be present; there is a mechanism for doing 
that. I just wanted to make sure the record reflected that.
    Mr. Perlmutter. You had to be there, and everybody had to 
stand up at that point----
    Mr. Roy. A fifth would have had to be present in order to 
do that.
    Mr. Perlmutter. Right.
    Mr. Roy. My point is just you can do that with a body. 
Otherwise, you can do it with voice if you don't have the 
fifth. I mean, you can do it by voice.
    The Chairman. Yeah. I think it is not unreasonable, based 
on where we are and what we have seen, to believe that it would 
be very difficult for us to proceed without what we put in 
place. And I think that is just the reality. And I am glad we 
were able to proceed. I am glad we were able to get some stuff 
done.
    But let me yield to my friend, Mr. Cole.
    Mr. Cole. Thank you very much. I am going to have to leave. 
I am already late. But I want to make a few quick remarks.
    The Chairman. You are not going to the St. Patrick's thing, 
are you?
    Mr. Cole. No. I am going to one later tonight, though.
    The Chairman. You can have my meal.
    Mr. Cole. Anything in the middle of the--it would be a St. 
Patrick event in the evening. I promise you.
    Mr. Roy. You can leave your proxy with me.
    Mr. Cole. But, first, I want to begin, Mr. Chairman, by 
thanking you for the hearing. I think it is very important for 
the institution to have the hearing. I want to thank all our 
witnesses for I know you waited a long time in many cases to 
have an opportunity.
    I want to congratulate my friend, Mr. Roy, on his son, 
because that is a pretty well-behaved young man to sit there 
that much time and listen to adults drone away. So good job, 
dad.
    I do want to respond--I want to do this very respectfully 
to the majority leader. He did not have a chance to be here. So 
this is--you know, I don't usually like talking--or replying to 
somebody when they are not here, but there are a couple of 
things--several things he said that I wanted to just take, have 
a different perspective on, perhaps he doesn't, just make sure 
it gets in the record.
    Mr. Cole. One, he talked about en blocs, and they are 
common around here, and they are. But pre-COVID, the way it was 
done was always by consent; in other words, we all agreed 
pretty much: We know these are going to pass so we are going to 
group them all together. And if the individual Member wanted to 
pull one out and have a vote on that, that Member could do 
that. That is not what we are doing now.
    So the en bloc is not how it has been. We can debate the 
wisdom of it, but come on, we all know they are packed: This 
group is going to lose; this group is going to win. And if you 
like one in the group that is going to lose, you are not going 
to have a chance to maybe pull that across the line. So I think 
that is a big loss and something we ought to think about moving 
forward.
    Second, he brought up, not particularly relevant to our 
deal, the infrastructure bill and made the point that all of us 
that voted against it did so because our party leaders voted--
told us to. That is just not true. You know, number one, and 
this is really important for everybody in America to 
understand, that bill that the Senate wrote never came through 
committee over here. I mean, the own committee chairman of the 
Transportation and Infrastructure bill never had a chance to 
offer an amendment or shape the most important bill probably of 
his career. That was true for every single Member of the body, 
majority or minority had zero chance to impact that bill. So 
that is one reason to be against it.
    And, number two, I will tell you, even in the Senate it did 
not go through the Public Works Committee, and so the people on 
that committee had nothing to do with it. It was all done by 
people honestly all of whom were not on the Public Works 
Committee.
    So, you know, I seldom vote against bills because of what 
happens in the Senate. But, you know, process alone, I will 
tell you, the, quote/unquote, bipartisan infrastructure bill 
was the biggest surrender of institutional authority by this 
body that I have ever seen in 20 years. We just said: We don't 
have anything to do with it. We are taking whatever the Senate 
wants to do, won't go through our committee. Our Members, 
Democrat or Republican, majority or minority, they are not 
going to have anything to say about it. That is a pretty damn 
good reason to be against any bill no matter what.
    Second, my friends chose the President of the United States 
to link it with Build Back Better. Nobody on my side was for 
Build Back Better, and when you put them together and said, 
``We are not moving this one until you move this one''--and 
with all due respect to my friends, a considerable number of 
your members were in that position too saying ``I won't vote 
for this unless you vote for this even if you are against 
it''--that is what muddied the water and partisanized the bill 
even more.
    And in terms of holding it up, let's be real, your Members 
held it up. We didn't hold it up. I mean, we don't have the 
ability to hold it up. Your Members squabbled for months on end 
over this process, and that is why we ended up without having 
what is normally a very bipartisan process. You know, normally 
infrastructure bills are bipartisan. But you guys made it 
partisan, and you got the kind of vote honestly that I think 
the bill deserved.
    I mean, even some of your own Members--you know, you had to 
have the Republican votes to pass it because your own Members, 
there wasn't enough of your own Members, you wouldn't have been 
able to pass otherwise. And I have no quarrel with Members that 
voted for it, my side or your side. Zero quarrel. If that is 
what you thought you needed to do, fine by me, you got a vote.
    And I would separate myself from anybody that called to 
remove any Member from a committee. That very many people did, 
quite frankly, and those Members, for the record, were all 
still on the same committees that they were on. So this mock 
outrage, my gosh, we are so afraid of what was going to happen 
to these 13 people, they are all there. Don't worry about it. 
And that was never going to happen on our side.
    Finally, or two more quick points, I want to associate 
myself with something you said, Mr. Chairman. I agree with you, 
there is a big difference between witnesses testifying by Zoom 
and Members participating by Zoom, as my friend, Mr. Bost, and 
I have zero problem. I think that has opened up a new area for 
us, offers us the ability to bring people in to testify. I 
think that is something that is really worth thinking about, 
and it probably has enriched the body, and that is one where, 
you know, maybe technology does make a good difference.
    Last point I want to make is just about proxies. And I 
agree with you, I am not interested in policing other Members. 
I am really not. But I also agree with Mr. Gallagher. I mean, 
come on, when it is twice as likely on Monday and Friday as it 
is on the days in between, that tells you everything you need 
to know. No question this process has been abused in a 
bipartisan way. I don't single out either side for that.
    And I think it hints at the challenges of maintaining it. 
None of us want to police our colleagues, you know. We don't 
like to do it. We don't like to sit in judgment and with good 
cause. But when you look at something and on the face of it, it 
is being abused every day by Members of both sides, it is just 
an easy habit to fall into.
    So sometimes maybe we should just remove the temptation. I 
don't particularly like proxy voting. I am all for getting away 
with it. The Senate managed to function on its own without it. 
I think the majority leader made some good points about, you 
know, the challenges of somebody just not being there for a 
very good reason, like our friend Mr. Lujan. That is worth 
considering. I don't agree with it. I think that just happens.
    I am sort of where my colleagues that remain on the panel 
are. I just don't like the practice. I think it is bad, and I 
think it ultimately destroys--and you just deal with these 
problems when they occur. And Mr. Roy made a good point, you 
know, honestly, you know, none of us are usually that 
important. That is a pretty rare deal. And I noticed the Senate 
managed to get through it without ever proxy voting and managed 
to get through this whole process.
    So, if we are one of the most productive Congresses in 
history, something I would probably not accept, but, you know, 
for the purpose here, they had to do their part too, because 
nothing happens around here without both bodies agreeing. And 
if they were that productive and they could do without proxies, 
then we should be productive and we should have been able to do 
it without proxies or certainly not going forward, certainly 
not in the current climate that we are in.
    But last point, and I want to finish on a very positive 
note, again, we have this discussion today where we have got a 
robust exchange in where we have had views that are very 
different across the spectrum because you gave us the forum.
    And my colleagues here, and I hate to say this as I am 
getting ready to walk out, thank you guys for being here all 
day. And those of you that are following us remotely, I 
appreciate that participation too, because, again, our members 
of our committee, Mr. Chairman, have continued to participate 
in a variety of ways, and they spend a lot of hours up here.
    We have made you guys spend a lot of time here, and we 
apologize for that, but, you know, this is pretty routine in 
our committee. This is a very robust committee. It is a very 
well-run committee by the chairman, and I would like it if we 
are nine to four in the other direction. As a matter of fact, 
it is may too well run in that sense. There is never a 
defection on the other side, and there is never one on ours 
either.
    But, again, thank you for hosting the debate, because we 
are going to be wrestling with these problems for a while. We 
have had very unusual circumstances that led us into this 
particular place that are worth talking about. They are worth 
thinking about. They are worth, you know, us wrestling with as 
a body as to what we should do going forward, because, again, I 
do see some limited cases where I would agree this technology 
can be useful.
    I don't think I probably would ever come to the point that 
I think proxy voting is useful, but if those are the rules, I 
guarantee you I will play by the rules. And, if you make them 
the rules, I don't have any problem with somebody that says: 
Okay, I don't agree with the rules. There is a lot of things 
about campaign finance I don't agree with, but I play by the 
rules.
    There is a lot of things, you know, procedurally in my 
committees I may or may not agree with, but if that is the 
procedure and these are the rules of the House, they have been 
voted by a majority of the House, I accept that, and I play by 
those rules. And then, if the majority changes, I hope the 
rules will change that reflect maybe something a little closer. 
But that is not abuse of the system, and I don't think that is 
doing anything wrong.
    But, with that, again, thank you very much.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Mr. Cole. Thank you for allowing me to go on a little bit 
as a rant, particularly as I am getting up and leaving, which 
is not courteous, so I apologize to my colleagues on the panel. 
I particularly apologize to you, Mr. Chairman, and everybody 
else up here.
    The Chairman. We appreciate it.
    Mr. Cole. Thank you.
    The Chairman. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank 
you.
    Mr. Perlmutter.
    Mr. Perlmutter. I am going to pass to Mr. Raskin because I 
have to go vote remotely in that room in Financial Services.
    The Chairman. Mr. Raskin.
    Mr. Raskin. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
    I wanted to first start by saying hello to Mr. Roy's son, 
who has demonstrated that the use of technology is perfectly 
consistent with the legislative process today, and we are 
delighted you are here.
    I have got to agree with one point my friend, Mr. Roy, 
made, and then disagree with one point. The point I agree on is 
that the Supreme Court's denial of cert letting stand the lower 
court ruling, which is that this is a political question, 
doesn't decide it for us because all of us swear an oath to 
uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign 
and domestic and to interpret it the best we can.
    So it is not just within the province of the judicial 
authority to interpret the meaning of the Constitution. I think 
all of us are called upon to do that, and that is why this is 
an important and fundamental conversation that we are having 
today.
    However, I think that my friend from Texas kind of 
flippantly said, well, you know, if we didn't have telephones 
or computers when the Constitution was written then we update 
the Constitution to adjust to the technology. The Supreme 
Court, for one, has been very emphatic actually that the values 
and the principles of the Constitution must be applied by us 
through the prism of new and existing technology.
    And one Supreme Court decision that leaps to mind on that 
front is Katz vs. United States in 1967 on the interpretation 
of the Fourth Amendment. I see I got the attention of one of my 
former law students here, who is a distinguished staff member 
on the Republican side of the aisle.
    But you will remember that Katz vs. United States was about 
whether the placement of telephone bugging devices by the 
government on a phone booth violated the Fourth Amendment 
reasonable--violated the Fourth Amendment. And the argument 
made by the government was, well, it couldn't violate the 
Fourth Amendment because telephones didn't exist when the 
Constitution was written and neither did telephone bugs, and 
therefore, how could it violate the Fourth Amendment.
    And the Supreme Court said, it is the principle embodied in 
the Fourth Amendment that we must translate to the application 
of new technologies. And the principle there the court said in 
a 7-to-1 decision, I think it was Justice Stewart who wrote it, 
was that there is a reasonable expectation of privacy embodied 
in the Fourth Amendment, and we can determine what the 
reasonable expectation of privacy means in the context of the 
development of new technology.
    So how does that apply to the question of legislative 
voting in Congress? Well, when the development of computerized 
voting took place in Congress, all kinds of cries were heard by 
people saying this violates the Constitution because it didn't 
exist when the first Congress met. James Madison used his 
voice. The ayes and the nays, it was said, requires a voice 
vote and not pushing a green button or a red button.
    And one can see kind of the simplistic appeal of that 
argument. That is the way it was always done. But what really 
was the underlying constitutional value? It was the vindication 
of the voice of the Members representing the will of the 
people. And so even though it is true the first Congress didn't 
look up at the board to see green and red and even though it 
did alter the political dynamics, because in those days you had 
to hear, well, how does Mr. Roy vote or, before that, how does 
Mr. Biggs vote in alphabetical order.
    But you know what, there is nothing in the Constitution 
compelling the use of alphabetical order, and the real issue 
was the vindication of the will of the people as transmitted 
through the effectuation of the vote of the Member. And so the 
computerized voting took place, and the proxy voting took place 
during COVID.
    Now, I would argue that proxy voting actually effectuated 
the meaning of the Constitution all built into the first three 
words of the Constitution: We the people. Because the people's 
voice was enabled to be heard by virtue of the proxy voting 
that we developed.
    Because, otherwise, we know that there would have been 
legitimately here--and I will get to the question of the 
illegitimate uses of it, which I think is the real question--
but legitimately we would have lost hundreds or thousands of 
votes representing the will of the people. And so we actually 
vindicated the constitutional design and the will of the people 
by implementing proxy voting.
    Now, so let me turn to that. And let me first say, I am 
pleased to hear a lot of consensus, I think, with the possible 
exception of Mr. Bost, that, on hearings, the use of Zoom 
technology and other such technologies was a very positive 
thing that we were able to actually incorporate the voices of a 
lot more Americans from all over the country, including the 
nonmainland, Hawaii and Alaska, and we were able to do that in 
a way that saved people money, that didn't require people to 
spend $1,000 or $2,000 to come to Washington. And it also had 
some positive environmental implications at least for, you 
know, those who believe that climate change is a problem.
    All right. So, on the hearing side, I think that there is a 
very strong consensus that we have done the right thing, and 
this is something that we should enable in the future. So the 
real question comes down to proxy voting on the floor. Now, let 
me start with this, if anybody has got standing to complain 
about proxy voting, I think it is me, okay. I live closer to 
the Capitol than any other Member of Congress with the 
exception, I think, of the nonvoting Delegate from the District 
of Columbia, okay.
    I have been the proxy voter, I have been the courier for 
hundreds and hundreds of proxies, and I will say this does 
qualitatively change the experience of the Member who has got 
to do it because it is like a second job. You are working all 
the time to make sure you are getting the proxy votes in, that 
you are scrupulously observing exactly what they have told you 
to do, and then you have to stand up, record all those votes, 
then you have got to go down and turn in the reds cards and the 
green cards and so on.
    But you know what, I was proud to do it. I have been proud 
to do it, because those people would otherwise not have been 
able to vote. And their constituents, millions of constituents, 
would not have had their will embodied and representative in 
the votes that took place.
    And you know what? I ended up using it just about 3 or 4 
weeks ago because I came down with COVID. Now, I was in the 
shocking position suddenly of asking somebody else to carry a 
proxy for me. I think I missed only 2 days; maybe it was 3 
days' worth of votes. I had a positive test. I didn't want to 
go in and infect anybody else, but I wanted my constituents to 
be heard, and I wanted to be heard on the things that were 
being done. So I think there the system worked.
    I think that Mr. Gallagher has put his finger on the 
question we need to deal with, which is, have there been abuses 
of this system? And we are not an investigative committee. We 
don't need to go into all of this, but I think it is some 
people's sense that there has been some slipperiness at the 
beginning of the week, at the end of the week. Although I will 
say, 4 out of the 7 days of the week are the weekend or Mondays 
or Fridays, so you would expect that there would be more use of 
it during that majority of the week when, you know, more of the 
time would be lost.
    But, setting that aside, let's say, I think we need to 
define very carefully what the principle is that we need to 
embody in our role. And, for me, and I appreciate the honest 
discussion about this, what I would say is that Members should 
be able to avail themselves of proxy voting if they have a 
compelling medical reason to do so or, I would say, a 
compelling family reason to do so.
    And, on that point, I will just say, as you guys know, my 
family experienced a catastrophe with the loss of my son. And I 
would say, at the very least, for dealing with a death or very 
serious illness in the family, Members should be able to meet 
their constitutional duties of representing their constituents 
and also meet their family needs.
    I think that that is a reasonable, legitimate, and 
compelling exercise of our power under Article I, section 5, to 
set the rules of our own proceedings. That is why the Supreme 
Court turned it over to us. That is why the courts stand back, 
because they say, under Article I, we have the power to define 
these rules.
    So we are going through right now, this moment, precisely 
the exercise I think that the Constitution contemplates for us: 
Where do we draw these lines? And for me, I would want to say 
that people should have to attest that they are using the proxy 
procedure for a compelling personal, medical, or family reason.
    And then, at that point, it is between that member and 
their constituents, and if they are lying about it, if they are 
out doing a fundraiser, if they are at a golf tournament or, 
you know, even if they are at a meeting at the White House, I 
am sorry, if you have to miss your legislative duties because 
of a meeting at the White House, you should be able to explain 
to your constituents why you were advancing the legislative 
agenda you were elected to come and serve, or you can explain 
it to the President, you have got to go vote. I think the 
President will understand.
    So, to my mind, it is just a question, Mr. Chairman, of how 
do we develop a system that implements a principle which is 
that Members should be able to avail themselves of a proxy if 
they have a compelling medical reason or a compelling family 
reason. And I think that not only will all the Members of 
Congress understand that because of our common humanity and our 
common citizenship, but I think all of our constituents will be 
able to understand that, and let's develop a system that would 
make that work. And that is my basic sense of it.
    Mr. Roy, I have invoked your name a couple times. I don't 
know if you have any response to my thoughts on it.
    Mr. Roy. I have a couple of observations, and I appreciate 
you giving me the opportunity. Number one, with respect to the 
search-and-seizure comparison, I would argue that that is the 
point. I mean, we can disagree on what ``presence'' means, and 
we could have a long discussion about that, but search and 
seizure is search and seizure. I mean, the fact that--and I 
understand there was a debate there and there was, again, that 
opinion. But search----
    Mr. Raskin. They said it was physical. That is what was so 
interesting. They said it has got to be physical.
    Mr. Roy. Fair, but at the end of the day, it is a question, 
but the principle was search and seizure. The principle was 
your ability to not have your conversations or your privacy 
invaded, et cetera. But, in this case, the principle is 
presence. And for me, if you go look--you know, the quorum, 
right, where they are saying attendance is compelled, right. 
Now, that is quorum. It is not specifically to the vote.
    But the Constitution is littered with ``presence,'' with 
``seat,'' with being here. And so we can debate whether it is a 
good thing or a bad thing. We debate the use of technology. We 
can debate whether we should be able to vote from Austin, 
Texas, and I go push a button there in a secure mechanism, 
whatever--let's put aside the security question, which raises a 
whole other issue.
    But let's say you could do that by Zoom or otherwise, I 
think it would be a terrible idea. But I still think that 
violates presence, and that would be a debatable proposition, 
right. But I think when you make that kind of a change, that is 
a trajectory shift, in my opinion, when you are changing that 
in that kind of a direction.
    The second thing I would point out, and I do want to--I 
want to say this very carefully and with extraordinary 
admiration, you were here last January, and I admired you 
immensely for it, even though there were heightened 
disagreements on the political realities of the impeachment 
debate, and we had numerous conversations about all of that. I 
admired you enormously for your fortitude of being present in 
this building in January of last year. And I think that was a 
testament to the strength of what this body is supposed to mean 
by our doing our jobs and being physically present, and I say 
that carefully and with enormous respect.
    Mr. Raskin. Sure, Mr. Biggs, did you want to add something?
    And thank you, Mr. Roy, for that. I--well, it is a personal 
conversation. I am not----
    Mr. Roy. I understand.
    Mr. Raskin. Yeah. I am not sure about the implications for 
that in all cases, but I appreciate your saying that.
    Mr. Roy. Appreciate it.
    The Chairman. Mr. Biggs.
    Mr. Biggs. Thank you, Mr. Raskin, for giving me just a 
moment. I think for me part of the problem is you focused on 
proxy voting. And I think where I am, and I think Mr. Roy 
probably is there too, that is very different than--you never 
get to the proxy voting question because you haven't resolved 
the quorum question. And until you resolve the quorum question, 
I don't think you can address the proxy voting question.
    And I don't think allowing people and just throwing it in a 
House resolution that, okay, we are going to deem you if you 
vote by proxy that you are physically present, I don't think 
that gets to the question of the constitutionality of how we 
are now defining quorum. I think that is where the shift really 
is taking place in how you are defining quorum.
    And once you have defined quorum and said, if were we to 
get there, and I think it is unconstitutional to say that a 
quorum consists of somebody who is not on site, not present, 
not meeting the myriad references to it or Article I, section 
5, which says a minority of the body can send someone to compel 
you to attend--have I been off the whole time?
    Mr. Roy. My staff said you weren't on anyhow.
    Mr. Biggs. Okay. Let me start back over. I am just saying--
--
    Mr. Perlmutter. That is why I came in here.
    Mr. Biggs. Thanks, Ed.
    So you see what my point is you have moved into the 
secondary question before you have resolved the Article 1, 
section 5, presence and quorum question. And I don't think that 
you can satisfy that by saying if you are not here and somebody 
else deems you to be here; I don't think that is 
constitutional.
    And that is--I think that is a different question, but I 
think--I don't think you ever can get to the proxy voting 
question until you have resolved that question, and I don't 
think you can resolve that question in favor of a proxy 
presence for quorum.
    Mr. Raskin. Well, I think you are right. We have treated 
them as really the same question. You could bifurcate it and 
say--you could make the argument, perhaps you are making it, 
that, once you have established a physical quorum as 
traditionally understood, then you could have proxy voting at 
that point, or you could say you can't have proxy voting at 
that point.
    But, you know, there is a history to this that predates 
COVID-19, which relates to, what if there's a violent attack on 
the Capitol? We have seen one as recently as perhaps right now, 
I don't know, or January 6, you know, last year. You know, are 
there alternative quorum rules, and there have been some that, 
you know, have been adopted, you know.
    Yeah.
    Mr. Biggs. Yeah, thanks. I want to respond to that. A 
professor of law, David Forte, he has taken where you are 
going. I thought you might end up there. But his position would 
be you still have a major problem because of the parameters of 
the Constitution as it is set forth. If you want to change it, 
you would need to something akin to the 25th Amendment or 
something like that where you lay out a succession, emergency 
succession.
    Mr. Raskin. I gotcha. And, for me, it all comes back to 
Article I, section 5, that the Framers did endow Congress, each 
House of Congress itself with the power to write the rules 
unless it violates some extrinsic constitutional boundary. And 
that is like Powell vs. McCormack in 1969, where the Court said 
we are not going to admit a particular Member, and the Court 
said: Well, you can't do that because the constitutional 
qualifications are set forth specifically.
    But I don't think we have got some kind of explicit 
constitutional boundary that, you know, that restrains us in 
that way. But I under--that is an honest disagreement.
    Mr. Biggs. Yeah, we can continue this debate. Thank you.
    Mr. Raskin. Yeah. And I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. Mr. Reschenthaler.
    Mr. Reschenthaler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I was 
actually enjoying that debate. So I know we were talking about 
constitutional issues. I am going to talk about more practical 
implications.
    But, before I do that, I want to, Mr. Chairman, ask for 
unanimous consent to enter in the record an article written by 
my good friend Matt Gaetz.
    The Chairman. Without objection.
    [The information follows:]
    Mr. Reschenthaler. Or unanimous consent to enter that in 
the record. Thanks. I appreciate it.
    The Chairman. Yeah, whatever you want.
    Mr. Reschenthaler. And I will reference that.
    Mr. Roy. Can I object to that? Because I think Matt 
disagrees with me on this point, but anyway, okay.
    Mr. Reschenthaler. Well, Mr. Roy, we are going to talk 
about this, so I will get to that.
    But, before I do that, I would also, Mr. Chairman, ask 
unanimous consent to enter the testimony of my other good 
friend Mr. William Timmons. He wasn't able to be here, but 
interesting take on how in-person meeting could actually 
increase civility, so, without objection, I would like to enter 
that.
    The Chairman. Without objection.
    [The information follows:]
    Mr. Reschenthaler. Thanks.
    So, getting back to the article by Mr. Gaetz, basically to 
over summarize this, to basically distill it down, he basically 
says it is not good for legislators to be here in Washington, 
D.C., lots of reason for that. The practical implications of 
proxy voting would lead to what Mr. Gaetz is advocating for, 
and that is for us never to come to Washington, D.C.
    And I remember a few years ago, you know, I am a big fan, 
Ben Shapiro said: Why do we even send Representatives to D.C.? 
Why don't we just vote from the district? And there is an 
inclination by people to jump to that default position. There 
are serious implications to us not being here. And I tell my 
constituents all the time, I say: Look, if I am not in 
Washington, D.C., you are not represented in Washington, D.C., 
like your voice is not heard here.
    And it is just more than voting, because it is the face-to-
face interactions. It is the advocacy in committee, in our 
conferences, et cetera. We have got to be here to effectively 
push legislation. And if we are not here, I have a big fear 
that all the power that the rank and file has will just 
gravitate to the leadership because leadership is here.
    Mr. Roy, do you have any thoughts on that practical 
implication?
    Mr. Roy. Yeah, I do. And, in fact, Matt or Mr. Gaetz and I 
have, you know, debated this quite a bit on the House floor and 
just in general. And I appreciate where he is coming from, 
right. I mean, I am fairly well known as a limited government 
conservative. I would just as soon we meet, you know, once a 
year for like 2 days and, you know, pass a balanced budget and 
get out of town and stop messing up America, right. That is my 
general world view about these things. And I don't say it 
flippantly, but I mean it is my general philosophical 
persuasion on it.
    But I also think--take very seriously the importance of our 
being here when we are conducting business. And we conduct more 
business than I would prefer we do, and we are engaged in a 
whole lot of things I wish we weren't, but we are. And I would 
think we need to be here and debate them, and I think we need 
to look at each other face to face. And I think that it is kind 
of flippant to say: Well, let's just stay back in our districts 
and vote.
    And I think it would totally shift power even further to a 
very small handful.
    I mean, again, since I think May of 2016--and I have said 
this on the floor; I think it is correct--we haven't been able 
to offer an amendment on the floor in open debate, and that is 
both leadership and control. And that is, I think, bad. I think 
that is bad for the institution. I think this is breaking down 
the ability for 435 Representatives to come here and have 
engagement and debate.
    And one last point on that, I would rather that we come in 
the beginning of a Congress and not leave for a while, much 
like a State legislative session, and sit here and do the core 
business of passing the budget and appropriations I prefer to a 
smaller amount and balanced amount, and then get--and then do 
whatever you are going to do and then space some time out. Go 
back home for a while. Then come back and do some oversight and 
offer some bills.
    But I would rather just come here for 3 or 4 months and 
let's do our job. We come in Monday. We have a fly-in vote. We 
have a couple of random rule votes for a couple of days. I 
don't even know what they are going to be half the time. And 
then we fly out Thursday night, and then we rinse and repeat. 
That is not, in my opinion, a very effective way for us to 
conduct business. Again, that is a bipartisan critique.
    The Chairman. Would the gentleman yield to me?
    Mr. Reschenthaler. Absolutely, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. I think I speak for all of us on this side. 
None of us associate ourselves with Mr. Gaetz'----
    Mr. Reschenthaler. I find that totally shocking, Mr. 
Chairman, but noted.
    Mr. Biggs, you wanted to comment?
    Mr. Biggs. Yeah. Just, I will say that a lot of what you 
have heard from people who want to be here in person, it is 
lets--it allows us to cross the aisle and have bipartisan 
discussion. And that is true, but it also allows you to have 
intraparty discussions that are missing, quite frankly. And so, 
once we got back into person, you know, Judiciary Republicans, 
we can get together, same with OGR, whatever committee you are 
on you can get together, you could--and that makes just as much 
difference as me sitting 5 feet from you intraparty as 
anything.
    So I just think that if we are going to just basically get 
to Matt's point of view, Gaetz' point of view--which by the 
way, I actually had a constituent tell me when I was first 
running, he said: I will vote for you if you ever get a chance 
to never go back to D.C. and just vote out here and never go 
back to D.C.
    I said: Well, I will consider that.
    But the reality is I think we need to be here because this 
is a collaborative process.
    Mr. Reschenthaler. Right, I couldn't agree more. And that, 
frankly--and, again, I have a lot of respect for Mr. Gaetz. We 
are friends. But that is the problem with proxy voting is that 
it leads to the extreme argument that we should just stay home 
and vote via proxy. And, again, all the power would gravitate 
toward leadership into and to an even larger extent the 
unelected bureaucracy and in the executive branch, because we 
are not doing oversight at that point if we are not here. But I 
am belaboring point.
    The other issue that it brings is that, within the 
conference, I know we were talking about bipartisanship, but 
within the Republican Conference and the Democratic Caucus, you 
would have a gravity shift to the larger delegations. What I 
mean by that: If you can't build relationships with people from 
various States, then what you would have is you would have all 
the leadership elections determined by, in our case, it would 
be Texas or Florida, and/or Florida, and on the Democratic 
side, it would be basically California and New York, because 
you would just vote as a delegation.
    So someone from a small--I am from the fifth largest State 
in population, but somebody from a small State would have zero 
shot of working his way--his or her way through leadership, and 
certainly they would not be well represented----
    Mr. Raskin. Like Steny Hoyer, for example.
    Mr. Reschenthaler. What is that, Mr. Raskin?
    Mr. Raskin. Like Steny Hoyer, for example.
    Mr. Reschenthaler. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Thanks, Mr. 
Raskin.
    Do you have any thoughts on that and just the shift toward 
the larger States?
    Mr. Biggs. I think--oh, now I am on. I think you are 
exactly right. And I think it would--not only would you see the 
power go to those States, which are already there--I mean, we 
have got California in the top two spots anyway, but you would 
see it filter on down, I think.
    I don't know how the Democrats choose their chairmen and 
chairwomen, but I think you would see it filter down. And I 
think that you are right on the first point you made in your 
first question is that it would also arrogate power to the 
center or the leadership, so that would be a concern.
    Mr. Roy. Yeah, I agree. I don't have too much more to add. 
I mean, I don't think I have a whole lot of, you know, 
likelihood of moving up the leadership ranks regardless of 
whether it is through the Texas delegation channel or whether 
it is through the model you just described.
    Mr. Biggs. You never know.
    Mr. Roy. But what I would say is, I do think it changes the 
power balance. Like, I mean, again, getting back to the core 
question here, physical presence matters. We all get that. I 
mean, I appreciate--and I haven't opined much on the hearings, 
but there is a distinction between Members being present for 
hearings and markups versus witnesses being able to avail 
themselves of technology. I think that is a distinction.
    I think physical presence matters, not just because I see 
it through a constitutional lens, but because human interaction 
matters, being able to, you know--it is why texting is 
terrible. It is why social media is largely garbage. It is just 
that you break down that human interaction that I think is 
necessary for us to try to truly strengthen the Republic. And I 
think this is one of those consequences.
    Mr. Reschenthaler. Thanks.
    Mr. Ranking Member Bost, I have not ignored you. I have a 
whole line of questions for you, and I will be brief with it.
    Mr. Bost. I am not offended.
    Mr. Reschenthaler. Well, I am glad you are not offended.
    Ranking Member Bost, would you like to talk about how 
remote proceedings have impacted your committee?
    Mr. Bost. Yeah. And you know what? Some of the speakers 
that spoke about the importance of actually giving someone the 
opportunity to give witness, and to your example, the President 
of Ukraine, great.
    But when we are going into a voting situation and 
technology is what it is, you have breakdown in the 
communication, you have a breakdown in the vote, you have rules 
that have been set forth but I have to, as my side of the 
aisle, remind them that the person is not present, there is not 
a good connection, trying--and then you are interrupting votes 
and you are doing all of this.
    And, quite often, it is even worse than the proxy, in the 
fact that you don't have to sign a paper to say, ``I am staying 
home and doing this because --.'' You are just doing it 
because. And that breaks down that ability.
    And also--and we don't want to take away the power of the 
chair of each committee to make the decisions on their own, but 
there needs to be a standard set that decides when it is that 
we need to meet in person, when we need to have a hybrid, when 
we need--as things start to slide away from the initial reason 
why we did it, and that was this pandemic.
    By moving in the way that we have, we have some committees 
that do this and some committees that do that, and it is the 
call of the chair. And because of that, Members become 
frustrated, on both sides of the aisle. And I just see a lot of 
problems and particularly with our committee with what we have 
tried to get back.
    Mr. Roy. Can I just add one point to that?
    Mr. Reschenthaler. Yes.
    Mr. Roy. Which is, how many of us have had the situation 
where you have competing hearings, and, you know, especially in 
the height of all of this when it was happening? We are not 
forced to make the tough choices of deciding where I am 
physically going to be present.
    And so then you have people that have--you have two iPads 
up, and you are listening to one and you are only kind of half-
listening, so you can go over and get a vote in on the other, 
because now it is sort of assumed that you are present for the 
hearing----
    Mr. Bost. Even though the rules say you can't do that.
    Mr. Roy. Right. But that is what--but people would do that.
    Mr. Bost. They would do that. I know.
    Mr. Roy. And you would see--and then the expectation--it 
goes back to that example of me sitting in Fredericksburg, 
where I am trying to figure out what to do.
    But yet there are Members that are going to vote; they are 
sitting at home doing whatever, or they are--and I don't mean 
to impugn any Members. But I am just saying----
    Mr. Bost. Writing a book.
    Mr. Roy [continuing]. It is a lot easier if you are just 
saying, ``Okay, I am out, I am going to do my thing, but I will 
just chime in and vote,'' as opposed to, ``I am going to 
physically be there and give up X in order to be there and 
vote.''
    And we are all here by choice, right? You guys didn't call 
me in as a witness. I am here because I think this is an 
important topic. And I have blown three meetings already. I 
have just blown through--and I am missing good brisket right 
now with the Texas lunch. But--anyway.
    Mr. Reschenthaler. I hate to stand in the way between you 
and brisket, so, just briefly, I want to hit on en bloc, 
because Ranking Member Cole had mentioned it.
    Ranking Member Bost, I saw that you lit up at that point. 
Would you like to talk about how it has affected bills coming 
out of your committee in particular?
    Mr. Bost. Other than the fact that I would just agree with 
the previous speaker that en bloc--en bloc is something that we 
have done. It is done in other ways. But now, with this, it 
even confuses that more. You don't have, really, the chance to 
remove things from en bloc like we did whenever I first got 
here. We should have that.
    And whoever is in the majority and they have the power, it 
is going to move. But at least have the ability to remove 
things that might be detrimental to those--no matter what side 
you are on.
    Mr. Reschenthaler. Chairman Biggs.
    Mr. Biggs. So I offer this solely because I am a contrarian 
in this sense. I don't think we should ever do an en bloc. I 
think we should have a recorded vote on every bill, every 
amendment. And the reason is because I think it is our 
responsibility to let the American people know what you are 
voting for and who is voting for it.
    I mean, the first rule change that I got to vote on in our 
conference, before I had even been sworn in, was whether we 
were going to go to a recorded vote on everything, no 
suspensions, a recorded vote. And when they came up and said, 
how are you going to vote on that? I said, you mean we don't 
have a recorded vote on everything? I was stunned. And I remain 
stunned by that.
    And, quite frankly, I think my constituency is--every time 
I mention that, they are baffled by it. And they want to know 
what we are doing, and they want to know what every bill is, 
and they want to see how I am voting on every bill. And I think 
that is really what this place is missing sorely, if you want 
to get trust back from the public.
    Mr. Reschenthaler. Thanks.
    And thank you for the generosity in time, Mr. Chairman. I 
yield back.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Before I yield to Mr. Perlmutter, let me just say, I think 
we all agree that presence is important, whether in committee 
hearings or on the floor. The question is, are there 
exceptions? You know, are there cases that should be considered 
in a way that, you know, where somebody could vote remotely? 
And I think that is kind of what we are trying to figure out 
here.
    But, no, I think in-person meetings and hearings and 
activity on the floor is very, very constructive and very, very 
productive and enables us to get things done. So I don't think 
that that is the question.
    The only thing that has been bothering me, Mr. Roy, is 
something you said. You were in Fredericksburg at a Starbucks, 
not Dunkin' Donuts? Because Dunkin' Donuts is the coffee of 
Massachusetts.
    And Mr. Reschenthaler, you know, only drinks Polar Seltzer, 
which is a Massachusetts product.
    But, anyway, I always bristle when I hear that.
    Anyway, Mr. Perlmutter.
    Mr. Perlmutter. Thanks. Just a couple points.
    First, I think we should--and we have started sort of 
distilling this thing. I think we can break this down. You 
know, what do we do on the floor? Is proxy available? Could we 
actually do remote voting on the floor, or do you always have 
to be there? Okay. Second, what do we do in committee? Can you 
have remote voting? Do you have to be present? Can witnesses be 
remote? So, one, you have the floor; second, you have 
committee.
    Then, I think Mr. Hoyer did a great job in his testimony 
talking about, sort of, the electronic upgrades of--do we have 
to actually hand--you know, even traditionally--and we have 
always done it--you put the thing in the hopper. Can't you do 
that electronically?
    You know, in the courtroom, you always had to go deliver it 
by hand to the clerk of the court, but you don't have to do 
that anymore. But that was tradition. So do we allow technology 
to really take its place, or does that damage what we do here? 
And I don't think it does damage, but that is where this debate 
comes in.
    And then lastly would be, kind of, the witnesses. What do 
we do with witnesses, primarily, obviously, in committee?
    But I think we can kind of segment this. Me, I am going to 
be very laissez-faire about the whole thing, I mean, obviously. 
I don't think that Mr. McGovern needs to police me as to 
whether I should have stayed home or not and voted from my 
house or voted from wherever. You know, that is the people; 
they are the ones that police me. And I don't want to 
disenfranchise them.
    So that is where I am coming from. And, you know, quite 
frankly--and I appreciate, sort of, the comments about 
sacrifice and all that jazz. You know, I was here a year ago 
November. I caught COVID over Thanksgiving you know, I was 
here. Got it on Veterans Day. Had to stay here by myself. I was 
told, ``Get off the campus.''
    My stepson had caught it. They found it when he was going 
back to work in New York. My wife calls me and says, ``You 
better go get checked.'' I said, ``I am fine.'' ``No, go get 
checked.''
    I get checked, you know, downstairs. They call a few hours 
later--I am in Longworth--and they say, ``You have COVID.'' I 
said, ``That is''--unrepeatable here. I said, ``I don't have 
COVID.'' They said, ``Get off the campus.'' They said, ``Get 
off the campus now. You cannot remain here.''
    And I said, ``Okay, I will go to my apartment. Can I go 
home?'' ``No. You will quarantine in your apartment here for 10 
days,'' when I used proxy to be able to vote on a couple 
matters that we had come up before Thanksgiving.
    So it was that--it wasn't that I hadn't sacrificed, Mr. 
Roy. I was here. But I couldn't be here. But the fact that we 
had a mechanism in place that took into consideration both 
proxy and technology, I could represent my people. They didn't 
lose their vote. They didn't lose their voice.
    So I think this is--I guess I would--one thing you had 
suggested, Mr. Roy--and I appreciate this--is, you know--
because we are trying in the Modernization Committee to figure 
out a better way to schedule things. You know, I have three 
committees going right now, you know.
    And how do young families operate? It is not, you know, 
that we are masochists here. ``Let's make it as hard for us as 
possible.'' That is silliness to me. You know, voting on every 
single amendment that may be agreed to, I think that is, you 
know--and I think you overstated your case a little bit there. 
I mean, I could understand the rest, but that, sort of, I don't 
get.
    But I remember one of the things that changed the dynamics 
in this place was back in 1994, not that I was here, but just 
reading the history. And, at that time, Representative Gingrich 
said about Democrats, ``They have gone Washington. They are in 
Washington too much.'' And, you know, to the point that Mr. 
Gaetz is trying to make, nobody should go to Washington, 
because potentially you change.
    And I think that that--because we are not here on weekends; 
we are not here to socialize--I think it did have an effect on 
how this place operates, just from my view of history.
    So, as much as I might agree with you on ``let's come in 
here and stay a block a time and just get stuff done,'' we are 
all going to be subject to this ``going Washington.'' I would, 
in the campaign, say it about you; you would say it about me.
    I do think it probably hurt the ability to collaborate, you 
know? Because where the friendships really develop are in 
passing, at dinner, you know, doing sports together, family 
outings together. Then you can't demonize the other person. And 
that is what you all are talking about, and I agree. The 
presence, it is harder to demonize somebody.
    The last thing I want to say is, I have just started 
thinking about Paul Bunyan, okay, and the steam engine. You 
know, Paul and Babe, you know, they are out there, they are 
chopping everything down, they can do it, and then this steam 
engine comes along. ``Well, I can beat that steam engine, and I 
will show you how strong and how tough I am'' and all that 
stuff. Well, the steam engine seemed to work, and it beat poor 
Paul Bunyan. And for us to deny the technology----
    Mrs. Fischbach. No, it didn't.
    Mr. Perlmutter. Well, in the Disney movie it did, by a 
quarter of an inch, 240 feet.
    Mrs. Fischbach. From my district, no.
    Mr. Perlmutter. But I just want to say, we can't deny 
technology that--and it may be that we aren't able to conduct 
business the way--by using technology, we can't conduct 
business. But I don't think we should deny the technology just 
because it makes our lives a little bit easier, that working--
you know, that mom. You know, Linda Sanchez's testimony was 
just, I think, spot-on, you know?
    So, for me, I would open this up wide, and I wouldn't have 
any limitations. And the chairman and I have disagreed on this; 
Mr. Raskin and I; Mr. Reschenthaler and I. I am, like, just 
totally laissez-faire on this. Either we don't do any of it or 
we just open it up and let the people police whether I have 
been a good Representative or not, whether I have been their 
voice or not.
    With that, I will yield back to the chair.
    The Chairman. Mrs. Fischbach.
    Mrs. Fischbach. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    And Disney might have had it wrong. I don't know, but--you 
know. There is a big statue in my district that says that----
    Mr. Perlmutter. Of Paul Bunyan?
    Mrs. Fischbach. Of Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox.
    Mr. Perlmutter. I guess I am sorry I brought him up.
    Mrs. Fischbach. I am just teasing you. And, you know, I 
have seen the Disney movie too. So I didn't mean to digress on 
that.
    But, Mr. Chair, before I start, I wanted to ask unanimous 
consent to enter into the record a letter from Rick Allen and 
an additional letter from Mr. McCaul.
    The Chairman. Without objection.
    [The information follows:]
    Mrs. Fischbach. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    You know, I will have to say that I was very disappointed 
that Mr. Hoyer couldn't stay--he gave his testimony--and so we 
are unable to have to discussion and ask him questions. And, 
you know, we have had many, many of our witnesses today stay a 
very long time and answer a lot of questions, and so it is 
disappointing that Mr. Hoyer did not.
    The Chairman. You could have objected.
    Mrs. Fischbach. You know what? I should have, now that I 
think about it.
    Mr. Perlmutter. In Mr. Hoyer's defense, he sat here for an 
hour before he was allowed to testify, so----
    Mrs. Fischbach. And, Mr. Chair, I understand that, and many 
of our other witnesses did too, so--and I do appreciate all the 
effort.
    But he did say a couple of things--Mr. Hoyer said a couple 
of things, and he had said that, you know, the proxy voting and 
some of the remote things had nothing to do with the 
partisanship. And you know what? Maybe, but it certainly didn't 
help. It does not help, when we don't have that person-to-
person kind of interaction.
    And, you know, we are talking about Zooms, we are talking 
about those--but you know what? You miss that ``I can see your 
eyes,'' you know, ``I can see the look on your face.'' There is 
a lot missing when you don't have that interaction.
    And this is a collaborative business. This is something--
you know, I think Mr. Cole told the story about how, you know, 
after he had withdrawn an amendment, he walked over and talked 
to another Member about it and explained it a little better. 
That kind of thing doesn't happen on Zoom.
    And, you know, I have talked a little bit, earlier on, 
about being a freshman. And you know what? As a freshman, you 
really miss that, because you don't have those established 
relationships. I don't have everybody's cell phone. I don't 
have someone, you know, I can pick up the phone, even if you 
are on a Zoom, and call them about something.
    And so I don't think it helps. I think--and I can't 
remember who--was it Mr. Perlmutter who said it is easier to 
demonize--or Mr. Raskin, I can't remember--it is easier to 
demonize them when you are not there. And I think that is very 
obvious. And I think that is much--that, I think, really, 
really adds to the partisanship. You are not there. You are 
not, you know, there with them, and so it is easier, much 
easier.
    I do think that Mr. Perlmutter was absolutely right when he 
talked about being in segments. Are we going to be allowing it 
in committee? Are we going--you know, because proxy voting, I 
believe, is probably the most egregious. And then how are you 
going to deal with, can you accept testimony? So I appreciate 
that you mentioned that.
    You know, someone used the example of the Zelenskyy 
presentation Zoom meeting that we had the other day. And I 
think that really had nothing to do with--that is just one of 
the wonderful things about technology. Yes, we can accept his 
speech by technology. It doesn't have anything to do with proxy 
voting or how we run a committee. We were able to hear from him 
remotely, and I think that is just simply an advantage we had 
from technology.
    But, you know, I have to just kind of reiterate the fact 
that, you know, the relationships that I have seen, you know, 
around the table--I believe it was Mr. Cole and Mr. Hoyer 
talked about what good friends they were--those were 
established because they were here, not because they saw each 
other on Zoom. They were established because they were able to 
meet with one another, talk to one another, shake hands in the 
morning, whatever the case may be. And I think that is what we 
are getting away from.
    And, you know, technology is a wonderful excuse, but we 
need to be here. We need to be here to talk to one another, to 
collaborate, to do the best we can for our constituents and for 
the country.
    And so I just have real strong concerns about moving to 
that direction. You know, as someone talks about just voting 
from our district--well, that is just--how do you offer an 
amendment if we are just voting--then we might as well just say 
everybody--you know, we will just put it all on the internet 
and everybody--and I know that there are some that might 
advocate for that, but just, you know, eliminate representation 
and just have everybody vote up or down on every bill. You 
know, the whole country, everybody gets a vote.
    And, like I said, some will advocate for that, but I think 
it becomes more and more difficult to be more bipartisan, to 
get things done, when we are not here, we are not here casting 
our vote for the people that we represent.
    And I would just like to ask either Mr. Biggs or Mr. Roy if 
they have anything they would like to add.
    Mr. Roy. I will just add, number one, because I haven't 
stated affirmatively how much I appreciate the Republican 
leader leading litigation to make this point. I think it was 
important. It didn't come out the way I wanted it to, in terms 
of the Supreme Court granting cert, but it was important for 
the leader to lead that lawsuit, and I want to thank him for 
that.
    And to the point just raised, I mean, at the end of the 
day, for me, this is--we have all said here, we agree, you 
know, human interaction matters, it is better, and so forth. I 
just think that, fundamentally, this breaks down the 
institution, if we go down this road. I have already 
established what I think in terms of the constitutional 
question. And we have talked ad nauseam about, I think, all of 
these points.
    But we want to bring to summation: We are going to 
undermine the whole idea of a republican form of government and 
sending Representatives to represent people and engage in the 
kind of discourse, debate that we are supposed to do, in my 
opinion, if you start breaking that down.
    I respect immensely, I think, the intellectual consistency 
of saying, well, kind of, either A or B and not trying to split 
the baby on this. But I think that there is a danger in opening 
that up wide, as the gentleman would do, in which, you know, 
kind of, let your constituents decide. Yeah, they will decide, 
but, in the process, you have empowered a handful to make 
decisions.
    And I would actually disagree about getting things done. I 
think lots would get done. I just think it will get done a very 
few number--a very few, powerful group of people with very 
little engagement by the whole body. And that, I think, would 
be ultimately the worst outcome, if you go down that road.
    Mr. Biggs. I just want to just address what Mr. Perlmutter 
was talking about, segmentation.
    I think we get back to the point that I am trying to make, 
maybe rather inarticulately, but that you have to deal with the 
quorum question as a constitutional question first. And then, 
once you have done that, then you can take it in segments if 
you will.
    But I just don't see how you can get to proxy voting and 
have that count as being in absentia and also being present for 
a quorum. And that is what we are doing when we are conflating 
proxy voting with a quorum. And, thus, I think that that is why 
proxy voting--that is one reason that proxy voting just seems 
incongruous with the constitutional Republic that we are today.
    Thank you. Thanks.
    Mrs. Fischbach. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I yield back.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    And I want to ask unanimous consent to insert in the Record 
statements from Representatives Plaskett, Velazquez, Waters, 
Johnson, Grijalva, Porter, and Ross.
    Without objection.
    [The information follows:]
    The Chairman. Before I see if anyone else has any questions 
here, I just want to make the point, we--first of all, let's 
not pretend that COVID never happened. I mean, what brought 
this about was COVID, this terrible pandemic where people died. 
We didn't know how to handle it at the beginning, and we 
reacted in a way basically to protect Members and staff and 
everybody who works up here, the Capitol Police.
    And like a lot of things that were put into place in a 
whole variety of areas as a result of the pandemic, I think it 
is appropriate to kind of go back and say, okay, is any of this 
worth continuing? And if so, what? And if not, why not? I mean, 
that is what this discussion is about.
    And I just have to say--and, again, present company 
excluded--and I could exclude myself, because I have never 
voted by proxy. But when people start talking about how this 
has been an egregious, you know, breach, I just want to state 
for the record that 60 percent of Republicans have voted by 
proxy, including members of this committee.
    So this idea that somehow this is a terrible constitutional 
breach, that it is egregious, and then, you know, ``but don't 
pay attention to what I have done.''
    And I appreciate your consistency. I mean, I have missed 
votes----
    Mr. Biggs. Same here.
    The Chairman [continuing]. As a result. I went to the White 
House when the President announced his relaunch of the Moonshot 
to combat cancer in this country, and I wanted to go. And 
people were saying, ``Oh, you have to vote? You should vote by 
proxy.'' No, because it is not COVID-related. I mean, if I had 
COVID or if my kids had COVID or whatever, then there is a 
justification, in my view.
    But every Member has to make their own decision, right? 
Every Member has to decide whether or not this is the 
appropriate thing to do. I know you haven't. I haven't.
    But I just want to put this in context, because I don't 
want this to be viewed as the only people who utilized proxy 
voting were Democrats. That is just not the case.
    Mr. Biggs. Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Roy. Well, Mr. Chairman, may I just say one thing on 
that?
    The Chairman. I will go to him and then to you.
    Mr. Roy. And I know we want to wrap up, and I don't want to 
belabor it.
    I appreciate your consistency on that, and I appreciate you 
having this hearing. And I would not defend any of my 
colleagues, either side of the aisle, who have questioned 
constitutionality or raised issues with this and then decided 
to go ahead and do it, particularly for reasons that are not 
COVID-related or might be for, I think, some dubious reasons, 
both sides of the aisle.
    The Chairman. No, I----
    The Chairman. Yeah, I----
    Mr. Roy. The only point I want to reiterate is the point--
the example I made with my Fredericksburg example going to UVA, 
but that is true for everybody. Once you go down--this is 
important for this discussion. Once you go down the road, then 
it becomes easier to play games with the legislative schedule. 
It becomes easier to, say, force a late night vote, that if 
everyone who is voting by proxy, they are not worried about it 
because they are hanging out at home or they are wherever they 
are. And then there are people going, well, I am hosed. And 
then they have to decide, well, what am I going to do?
    And so some kind of flipped their position because this is 
now the rules of the game. Once you have changed the rules of 
the game--now, I would argue it is unconstitutional, so I am 
not going to change the rules. But there is some that were just 
like, well, God, I am beaten down, I am going to miss this 
vote, so I am going to go ahead vote that way. I just think 
there is----
    The Chairman. Yeah. And I guess the other point--and I will 
yield to Mr. Reschenthaler--is we are also--the vast majority 
of people are back. I have spent more time in this committee in 
the last couple of weeks with this wonderful family than I did 
with my own family. And when I go to the floor to vote, there 
is a ton of people, Democrats and Republicans, voting. Yeah, 
there are some people voting by proxy. But this notion that 
somehow we are not back, we are not coming back, and we now--I 
have seen the latest reports about how the whole complex is 
going to be more opened up.
    But it is not like there is nobody here. The overwhelming 
majority of people are back and are voting, are debating on the 
floor. And I can't speak for other committees. I can only speak 
for this committee, you know, but we are meeting in person. And 
I am grateful for that most of the time.
    But, anyway, Mr. Reschenthaler.
    Mr. Reschenthaler. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Just briefly, to 
preserve the record and also for intellectual honesty, look, 
again, I am one of the people that voted proxy----
    The Chairman. Oh, did you?
    Mr. Reschenthaler [continuing]. Which goes against it. Yes, 
I did it a few times. But I am still--I still preserve the 
right to oppose the rule on proxy voting, because once the 
rules are changed, we got to play by those rules. And if we 
don't, there is a huge advantage to the majority--well, in this 
case, the majority.
    But--so, for example, if we were not proxy voting, and we 
could not make it, we would likely give up a 10 percent 
advantage to the Democratic Party, because at any given time, 
roughly 10 percent of us are not here. With margins this thin, 
we should still be engaged in proxy voting, because if we 
don't, we negate any advantage we have.
    But I am going to belabor the point. I will yield back, but 
I just want to preserve that point.
    The Chairman. No. And I guess you made the point that 
winning is more important than constitutionality. I mean, if we 
could have followed that--I am just saying, what I said before 
about--you know, again, consistency is one thing. I mean, you 
have said it, you believe it is unconstitutional, and you have 
not utilized it. There are others who have said it is 
unconstitutional and have utilized it.
    I do think, for me, if I thought something was 
unconstitutional, I wouldn't do it. I--and everybody has their 
own comfort level here. But just for me, if I thought this was 
unconstitutional, I would never utilize it. I haven't utilized 
it because I haven't had COVID or I haven't had family members 
who have come down with COVID where it might make me a risk to 
all of you. But I am just talking about, you know, when we talk 
about this being egregious and people utilize it, I think, for 
me, it is a little bit of a disconnect.
    Yeah.
    Mr. Biggs. Well, I appreciate that you see it as a 
disconnect. And for me, I am very--I think I have been very 
consistent.
    The Chairman. I----
    Mr. Biggs. I missed maybe three votes because of not 
wanting to vote proxy. But never forget that the majority 
implemented that rule. And what happened is, as this developed 
on, there are people who have sincerely held views that this is 
unconstitutional.
    The Chairman. And I am not disputing that.
    Mr. Biggs. Yeah. But my point is, I don't think that we 
should disparage somebody's motivations.
    The Chairman. Yeah.
    Mr. Biggs. And that is exactly what I think is happening. 
And that is all I am saying.
    The Chairman. No. And I would just say one other thing too, 
just for the record, because I think it is important to get 
this on the record. When we debated this, I have a list of 
Republican Members a mile long who came to me and said you got 
to do this. We can't be with you, but you got to do this. And I 
will--I remain firm in the belief that what we did, I think, 
save lives here and allowed us to continue our work. That is 
where I come from on this. And so that is my principle on this.
    So, Mr. Perlmutter.
    Mr. Perlmutter. Just a couple of points. You know, I think 
to Mr. Reschenthaler, to Mr. Biggs, Roy, I think you are right, 
I think obviously the proxy benefits the majority. The majority 
is making the rules. And it benefits leadership. I don't think 
there is any disagreement there. Now, you know, how does that 
play out when we make a vote on the rules? You know, if you 
guys are in charge sometime, you may say, you know what, we 
want to do proxies. It depends.
    Now, on the constitutionality, just for the record, I got 
to say, having been part of, you know, drafting this rule and 
all that stuff, the fact that we do have to be here present at 
the beginning of the session, you know, which, you know, a year 
ago was chaotic and scary, but we had to be here, that is when 
you--that is when you set down the rules. And, ultimately, we 
had to be here again when we changed this rule.
    There is a quorum at that point. There is no issue about 
that. And we, in my opinion, and I think the Supreme Court 
would agree, I think that is why they didn't grant cert, 
because it is, in my opinion, it is pretty darn clear we have 
the right to write our own rules as we see fit.
    To your point, were there enough people? Yes, when we did 
the rule. And then it--the rules are such for the next 2 years, 
and then you have to vote again on the rules package at the 
beginning of the session.
    And, with that, I will yield back. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. I 
mean, the discussion has been great. I think we have all said 
it a million times.
    The Chairman. We will go to Mr. Roy first. Who was it?
    Mrs. Fischbach. Well, he was asking for----
    The Chairman. Okay. We will go to Mr. Roy, then Mrs. 
Fischbach.
    Mr. Roy. I was going to make two points. The first one I 
was going to make to the point that we are all back. I would 
note that 13 percent of the votes that have been cast since the 
State of the Union have been cast by proxy. And I don't believe 
13 percent of the body has been dealing with COVID, but I will 
let other people reserve judgment on that to say we are back. 
Okay.
    And then the second point is on this issue. To say that the 
quorum principle is transitive, that it translates from day one 
that you can then establish quorum essentially for the rest of 
the time----
    Mr. Perlmutter. But the rule is translated, and that is why 
you have the quorum.
    Mr. Roy. I don't believe--now, I would take issue with 
saying that the constitutional requirement for quorum to then 
conduct business is a one-time start of the Congress thing, and 
then you are done. I would take issue with that.
    The Chairman. Okay.
    Mr. Perlmutter. [Inaudible.]
    The Chairman. Mrs. Fischbach.
    Mrs. Fischbach. Mr. Chair, thank you.
    And I just wanted to point out that the--you know, the 
majority put this rule in place, good or bad. I mean, my 
understanding, and I wasn't here originally when it was put 
into place, but my understanding is no Republicans voted for 
it. And then when we voted on the rules again, that is the 
case.
    So the majority put this in place. And Mr. Perlmutter 
admitted it that this is an advantage to the majority. And I 
guess I am concerned about the rules being skewed one way or 
the other on purpose, but that is the case.
    And, Mr. McGovern, you say that, you know, it saves lives, 
it was good at the time----
    The Chairman. Yeah.
    Mrs. Fischbach [continuing]. It was everything, but now is 
the time to end it. And I think that is what we are getting at, 
is it needs to be stopped now.
    Potentially, there was a value in it during the pandemic, 
but we have the opportunity to end the proxy voting now, where 
whoever took advantage of it, didn't take advantage of it, but 
that is the question in front of us. And I do believe that we 
should be ending it and go back to the tradition of the 
institution, which is no proxy voting. And I mentioned it 
earlier, over 200 years, we have been--that has been the way it 
has been done.
    The Chairman. Before you go, just to make sure, is there 
anybody else on the Democratic side who wants to ask a 
question--I don't see anybody.
    Mr. Roy. My son Charlie hopes not.
    The Chairman. No, but wait a minute. Dr. Burgess does.
    Dr. Burgess. I am just worried that someone will invoke Mr. 
Udall again, so I won't say anything.
    The Chairman. All right. So you are free to go. Thank you.
    All right. So our next panel is Representative DeSaulnier, 
Representative Takano, Representative Rose, and Representative 
Westerman.
    So, Mr. DeSaulnier, you are on.

  STATEMENT OF THE HON. MARK DESAULNIER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 
             CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

    Mr. DeSaulnier. Mr. Chairman, so nice to see you. Seems 
like just yesterday we were in Worcester.
    Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to testify in 
front of this most esteemed committee of the House of 
Representatives.
    As someone who lives with a chronic form of cancer that is 
manageable but uncurable, I am immunocompromised. I am not 
alone. Throughout the United States, there are 7 million people 
who are considered immunocompromised.
    From the start of this pandemic, the Centers for Disease 
Control and Prevention made it clear that people like myself 
were at increased risk of contracting coronavirus and having 
worse health outcomes. In more places across the country, 
people with health conditions have been adjusting to make sure 
they can continue to work on maintaining their safety. That is 
exactly what Congress and our leadership did when it authorized 
proxy voting and remote committee participation.
    Because of my leukemia and a freak accident I had coming 
back from a run on National Mall years ago, that landed me in 
George Washington University ICU on a ventilator, my doctors 
told me early on in the pandemic that it was unsafe for me to 
travel on a plane, gather in the crowded House Chamber, and 
attend committee meetings, especially in a very small Rules 
Committee hearing room.
    Proxy voting and remote committee proceedings allowed me to 
safely represent the people of California's 11th District while 
not risking my own life. Proxy voting works. It is a low-tech 
option that is easy to use, and it has allowed my constituents 
to have a voice on the House floor when I was unable to 
physically be present.
    Remote committee proceedings ensured I could continue 
serving on Rules and three other House committees I sit on 
while safely teleworking. While I and my family are happy to 
report that I am healthy and the treatment I take for my 
leukemia is working, I will say thankfully much of that 
treatment, as the taxpayers' investment, that has been 
supported by Members in Congress in bipartisan fashion.
    The threat from this virus is not over. Members continue to 
test positive. There were at least four last week. Allowing for 
proxy voting demonstrates to the American people that we take 
the advice of public health experts seriously and can continue 
to work on behalf of the country without putting other people's 
lives at risk.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman, thank you, Ranking Member Cole. 
And I yield back.
    [The statement of Mr. DeSaulnier follows:]
    The Chairman. Thank you very much.
    Representative Takano.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. MARK TAKANO, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS 
                  FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

    Mr. Takano. Well, thank you, Mr. McGovern, Chairman 
McGovern, and I appreciate the opportunity to testify before 
the committee on the subject matter at hand.
    I will just try to cut short some of my introductory 
remarks and just get straight to what--what I have observed 
with the new House procedures. And there is four points I would 
like to make today.
    First, the House rules should allow committees to take 
remote testimony from witnesses as the standard part of our 
proceedings. Prior to hybrid and virtual hearings, too often 
committees often only heard from witnesses who had the ability 
and resources to travel to Washington, D.C. I have a small 
travel budget. I could pay for some witnesses to get here, but 
certainly not on the kind of basis that we began to do when we 
changed the rules.
    Allowing witnesses to appear virtually means that we can 
gather a much greater amount of diversity of opinions and 
experiences and, therefore, gain a more complete understanding 
of the issues. Virtual hearings allowed us--allowed my 
committee to hear from many more veteran organizations, 
representing minority, women, Native, LGBTQ+, and other veteran 
communities, some of whom would not have been able to join in 
person.
    As an example, one compelling witness we met at our 
roundtable on veterans and the digital divide. The witness is a 
double amputee, living in very rural Montana. He told us that 
to testify in Washington, that would require him--he would be 
required to catch a once-a-day Amtrak, travel 2 hours to the 
nearest airport thereafter, and then catch two flights to 
Washington, D.C.
    This is the type of American that we need to continue to 
hear from, and it is my hope that we can allow virtual 
testimony in the future in order to open the door to diverse 
voices here. The pandemic taught us that we can use technology 
to bring the government closer to the people.
    Second, the pandemic forced us to modernize some antiquated 
House practices that we should continue. For instance, 
introducing bills, adding cosponsors, filing committee reports, 
signing letters, and other official actions were rightly made 
an electronic exercise during the past 2 years. As Members, we 
may not have noticed the change, but these updated procedures 
have saved many hours of work for our staff and should be 
continued and improved upon.
    Third, Congress must strengthen its technological ability 
to handle virtual hearings. We must acknowledge the hard work 
and long hours performed by the House Information Technology 
and Recording Studio staff, as well as committee and personal 
office staff to support these events and determine the best 
systems to use under stressful times.
    However, even after 2 years, we have not worked out all of 
the kinks. Committee rooms still do not have the technology 
that we need to avoid issues as basic as sound quality and 
reliable connectivity. We still use workarounds to ensure that 
we can integrate in-person and remote participation to attempt 
to hold seamless proceedings. We need support staff and 
resources devoted to the virtual aspects of our work for the 
long-term. Technology contracts should be both robust and 
flexible and should account for necessary support for these--
for remote hearings.
    I might just add that I am hopeful that the bipartisan 
infrastructure bill, which provides funding for rural areas and 
underserved urban areas in terms of broadband, is also partly 
the solution to make sure that there are connections from 
throughout the country that are going to be reliable and 
secure, allowing various parts of our country, diverse parts of 
our country, to be able to participate in what goes on here in 
Washington. So the House should continuously evaluate the 
technology options available so that we can test--that we may 
best meet our responsibilities to the American people.
    Fourth, we should ensure the House rules clearly address 
lessons for--that we have learned for holding virtual hearings. 
There is a need for more guidance and training for Members and 
staff on how to successfully hold virtual markups and hearings, 
as well as additional guidance on the enforcement of decorum. 
At the very least, we must be prepared for the next emergency 
that forces Congress to work virtually, and there will be 
another emergency. This is not a matter of if but when a major 
natural or human-made disaster strikes.
    I believe my committee's experience has shown that remote 
proceedings can be successful, and there is also additional 
work to be done. And I look forward to continuing to engage 
with this committee on that effort.
    I just might, on a final note, just--I was just looking on 
this issue of the quorum and proxy voting, and probably the 
hours of testimony that preceded me, you probably already 
covered the sort of experience in 1918 and the pandemic and the 
idea that we had a quorum of 50. And there was hope then that 
somebody would not object to the absence of a quorum. But the 
government actually ran on 50 votes. And so it seems to me an 
absolutist reading of some parts of our Constitution--the parts 
of our Constitution address the presence of a quorum.
    I mean, I don't know how much more democratic it is; if 50 
people were running the government, then all 435 of us being 
able to participate because of proxy voting. That is my final 
reflection, and I yield back.
    [The statement of Mr. Takano follows:]
    The Chairman. Thank you very much.
    Mr. Rose, Representative Rose, welcome back.

    STATEMENT OF THE HON. JOHN W. ROSE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 
              CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TENNESSEE

    Mr. Rose. Thank you.
    Thank you, Chairman McGovern, and Ranking Member Cole, and 
members of the committee, for allowing me to provide testimony 
on proxy voting and remote committee proceedings as established 
by the House Resolution 965 of the 116th Congress and renewed 
in the 117th Congress due to the public health emergency 
established in 2020.
    Since May of 2020 when the House Resolution 965 was passed, 
thousands of votes have been cast in committees and in the 
House Chamber without ever being--without Members being 
physically present. Unfortunately, Members were allowed no 
alternative to remote committee proceedings, but we were 
allowed to choose whether or not to participate in proxy voting 
in the House.
    To this day, I am proud to have been one of, by my count, 
56 Members of the House who have, in my opinion, not abdicated 
their constitutional duty to represent their constituents by 
participating in proxy voting.
    There are many reasons for this. First, and most 
importantly, failing to vote on important legislative matters 
in person would be failing my constituents that elected me and 
trusted me to serve their best interest in Congress. My 
constituents wake up every morning and go to work on the farm 
to feed our families, in the classroom to teach our children, 
into the police station to serve and protect our communities, 
or into the factory to make the things we use in our everyday 
lives.
    They should rightfully expect the same from me and all 
Members of Congress. When we don't meet those expectations, 
when we don't lead by example, we lose the moral authority to 
lead our country during one of the most perilous times in our 
history when such leadership is most direly needed.
    Second, oftentimes, there are important discussions, 
debates, and procedures that happen in the Chamber. 
Constituents whose Members vote by proxy and, thus, do not have 
their Representative present in the Chamber, lose out on those 
thoughtful discussions and debates that can sway opinions or 
change legislation.
    While the world is becoming more connected than ever with 
this constant streaming of ideas and information on the 
internet, its people are actually becoming more detached from 
reality as we spend more time on our phones than we do with 
real people. This has almost assuredly been at least a 
contributing factor to the rise of raw partisanship we see in 
the Congress today, where toxicity amongst political ideas or 
ideologies has become the norm.
    One simple way to combat this is by meeting face-to-face 
and actually listening to one another's ideas. Of course, we 
may choose to disagree on particular issues, but it is easier 
to understand and to respect from where the other side may be 
coming by simply having those face-to-face conversations.
    I have found that respect and affinity for one another is 
almost always enhanced from a positive face-to-face human 
interaction. Unfortunately, we seem to have fewer and fewer of 
these opportunities today, and proxy voting only exacerbates 
the situation.
    Last, the rule on establishing proxy voting and remote 
committee procedures was implemented during a time when our 
strategy was to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic on 
healthcare providers. We put our trust in public health 
officials and locked ourselves inside our homes for 15 days to 
slow the spread, or flatten the curve as some said.
    Commercial flights ground to a halt, and lodging was nearly 
impossible to find as governments imposed restrictive measures 
to limit private businesses from offering services, in a 
countrywide effort to mitigate the health effects COVID would 
have in the short run of the pandemic.
    This, obviously, made it difficult for Members to travel to 
Washington, D.C., hold hearings, and conduct additional 
official business, as it would have flown in the face of our 
public health officials. But those days are long over. There 
are no more excuses or mandates. As the resolution makes clear, 
the only purpose of proxy voting should be due to the ongoing 
health emergency, which no longer exists, in my opinion.
    Members bring no honor to themselves or to this institution 
when a foregone public health emergency is used as the 
reasoning for them not casting their votes in person. At the 
end of the day, Members of Congress have a constitutional duty 
to represent their constituents. While we can differ in our 
opinions as exactly what is required of us to satisfy those 
constitutional responsibilities, we are all sworn to uphold--
and surely, surely we can agree that there is merit and honor 
in striving to optimize, not merely meet those obligations.
    By continuing to proxy vote after any national health 
emergency has obviously dissipated, the quality of our 
representation of our constituents is to one degree or the 
other diminished. The pandemic has brought much heartache on 
our constituents and our country. The least we can do is make 
our best effort to represent them as effectively as possible. 
And to do that, the requirement for in-house voting and the 
face-to-face Member interaction that accomplishes such--
accompanies such is an essential component.
    I hope the committee takes into account these reasons for 
why I have chosen not to participate in proxy voting, and will 
finally mark the end of this emergency procedure that may never 
have been appropriate but that has certainly outlived any 
legitimacy it may have ever had.
    Thank you, and I appreciate the opportunity to address the 
committee.
    [The statement of Mr. Rose follows:]
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Representative Westerman.

  STATEMENT OF THE HON. BRUCE WESTERMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 
              CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ARKANSAS

    Mr. Westerman. Thank you, Chair McGovern and members the 
committee. I appreciate this opportunity to testify today on 
the impacts of remote committee proceedings.
    You know, the word ``Congress'' means the act of coming 
together or meeting, and that is what I believe this body 
should reflect.
    Mr. Chairman, I have not voted by proxy or remotely from 
outside of D.C., even on committee markups. And although I have 
strong convictions about voting in person, I want to focus my 
remarks today on why I believe remote committee meetings are 
detrimental to our Congress and why virtual is not the best way 
to come together or to meet.
    In June of 2021, the House Committee on Natural Resources 
held its first hybrid full committee hearing, where we received 
testimony from Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland. At that 
time, I expressed my frustration that it had taken 6 months for 
our committee to hold an in-person hearing. Little did I know 
then that meeting would be our only in-person full committee 
meeting of the 117th Congress to date.
    Simply put, I believe the persistence of remote proceedings 
has made our committee and this institution less civil toward 
our colleagues and witnesses, less efficient and effective as a 
deliberative body and, ultimately, less able to serve the 
constituents we were all elected to represent.
    I never thought I would have to say this, but committee 
proceedings are not a time to shave your face or brush your 
teeth, and they are certainly not a time to change your pants, 
but I have seen it all on remote proceedings. Sometimes I wish 
I could unsee things, but I simply can't.
    While my Democratic colleagues may not always agree with 
the positions of our Republican Members, just as I don't always 
agree with our Democratic Members, our committee rules exist 
for an open, fair, and respectful debate of pressing issues. 
Unfortunately, in our committee, Members of the Democratic 
majority have found new ways to circumvent our rules and weigh 
in without saying a word, constructing tinfoil hats that they 
probably wear on the nonpublic back end while our Republican 
colleagues are speaking.
    The disrespect in our committee is not limited to 
interaction between Members either. We have had Members of our 
Democratic majority make fun of witnesses for their attire, lie 
in bed, and order and eat their lunch while witnesses are 
offering testimony. I can only imagine the disrespect the 
witnesses who have worked days and nights to prepare the 
testimony they are presenting before our committee, that 
disrespect that they must feel when they see these kinds of 
actions from Members of Congress.
    Conversely, we have also had Members deprived of their 
ability to engage and question witnesses. When witnesses choose 
to log off from committee proceedings before adjournment, 
Members lose the opportunity to benefit from the expertise of 
the witnesses. Unfortunately, in some instances, early witness 
departure has been due to technical difficulties. Other times, 
it was a calculated action to avoid questions that challenged 
their testimony or were contrary to their own world view. 
Regardless, it is an unfortunate outcome that could be easily 
remedied by a return to in-person proceedings.
    A virtual format also deprives Members of full 
participation in committee hearings. Looking at a computer 
screen of faces is not the same as being in a room together. In 
addition, the value of personal interaction with our 
colleagues. We have had Republican Members denied recognition 
to speak because the chair could not hear them over background 
noise or because of technical difficulties on the chair's end. 
Now, this is just in the Natural Resources Committee. I also 
serve on the Transportation Committee.
    Representative Bost talked about people voting in their 
swim trunks on the lake. We have seen all kinds of things in 
the Transportation Infrastructure Committee that I don't 
believe are becoming of what Congress should be about.
    Recently, in our committee, a subcommittee hearing was 
delayed because the Democratic subcommittee chair was precluded 
by Democrat staff from participating in person from the 
committee room. The hearing was noticed as remote and, 
therefore, the staff would not turn on the AV equipment in the 
room, and the chair was forced to run back to his office and 
log on to his computer alone. While he relocated, the entire 
subcommittee proceeding was held in limbo.
    While the Natural Resources Committee hearing room has been 
open upon request for the use during committee proceedings this 
Congress, I must bring my laptop and earbuds to participate as 
our proceedings have been remote, and the majority will not 
turn on the microphones or the AV equipment in the hearing 
room. Members who show up in person are forced to be on their 
computers, even though our hearing room is one of the most 
technologically advanced rooms within the House office 
buildings.
    This is the challenge the subcommittee chair encountered 
when he mistakenly thought he could conduct his hearing from 
the hearing room. He didn't have his laptop, and the committee 
refused to move to a hybrid format.
    American taxpayers did not equip Congress with offices and 
technology for it not to be available or to be used. At times, 
Members have even lost the ability to have their votes counted 
accurately, or counted at all, as the clerk tries to align 
videos with voices on the Brady Bunch screen in the room.
    With all these antics, I worry that some Members and 
witnesses have stopped taking congressional committee business 
seriously. We see this every meeting when Members are seen 
laughing on long phone calls, playing musical instruments, and 
making meals, unmuting only to vote and change their votes when 
they learn that the measure--that what the measure was that we 
were considering was not the one they were voting on.
    A colleague made it through a whole opening statement for 
the wrong hearing, one she had already given, before realizing 
a mistake. Our ability to legislate is at stake. It appears 
that remote proceedings have allowed Members to treat 
legislating like a device they can turn on and off instead of a 
job they have been elected to do with their constituents.
    Congress is not, nor has it ever been, a virtual body, and 
we cannot simply turn off our responsibilities to our 
constituents. During a time of global unrest, skyrocketing gas 
prices, energy and security dependence on rogue nations for our 
minerals, and historic wildfires and drought, the Natural 
Resources Committee has serious work to do.
    Virtual legislation, I believe, has gone on long enough. 
The American people cannot wait until gas hits $6 a gallon 
before we decide to come back and get to work. This country is 
open for business, and Congress should be as well.
    There has been a lot of discussion, as I have listened in, 
about technology, how we should embrace it and how we should 
use it. And I think there is a format for that. I think we can 
have roundtables that aren't formal committee hearings where we 
do that virtually, and people don't have to have the expenses 
of flying here to D.C., and we can embrace technology. But I 
believe when it is an official, formal meeting of Congress, 
that we should do that in person.
    And I really appreciate you taking time to consider this 
issue. It was not something that I expected to happen, and was 
pleased to have the opportunity to come and voice my concerns. 
With that, I yield back.
    [The statement of Mr. Westerman follows:]
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    I thank you all for your testimony and your patience here 
today.
    Again, I just want to kind of put all this in perspective. 
I mean, these procedures were brought forward in the middle--in 
the beginning of this pandemic. And I continue to believe that 
what we did saved lives. I think it was a responsible thing to 
do. The point of this hearing is to look at all the things that 
we have done, not just here in Congress, but things that we 
have done to help programs become more efficient. You know, 
what should be kept and what shouldn't? And is it all, or is it 
nothing, or is it a piece of this? And that is what we are 
looking at.
    And so we still have a national health emergency, whether 
we all--hopefully, it is going in the right direction. We have 
an average of a thousand people a day dying of COVID. Yesterday 
was 2,000. I hope the trends continue to go down, but that is 
just the reality.
    We heard from Mr. DeSaulnier, his unique set of 
circumstances. And, you know, we value his ability to 
participate in this committee and to be able to represent his 
constituents back in California. And so I think there are--the 
question is, are there exceptions here?
    In terms of the decorum on hearings, I can't speak for 
every committee--I mean, I am only on this committee--but, you 
know, we don't deny the minority access to this room or we 
don't shut down the audiovisual equipment, although one time we 
had the air-conditioning on too high in the winter, and 
everybody was getting cold. But other than that, it wasn't 
intentional.
    But the point of the matter is there are rules, believe it 
or not, that accompanied the measures that we took here, 
including rules about decorum. And to be honest with you, all 
the chairs should insist that those rules be enforced. And I 
think if they are not, you have every right to complain.
    I think Members remotely, for example, must conform to the 
same standards for proper attire as required to participate in 
a committee proceeding in person. I mean, I just want to--I am 
not going to read all of them here, but there are standards 
here that are supposed to be followed. If they are not, it is 
perfectly appropriate to call it out. And we need to reflect on 
that, as we move forward, to say it. How do we make sure 
everybody follows the rules that were there?
    As far as somebody changing their pants in the middle of a 
hearing, that is a new one. We haven't seen that in this 
committee yet, and I hope we never do.
    But I just point that out to you because these rules were 
put in place for the safety of all those who work up here and 
making sure that we had the ability to get our work done. If 
the rules aren't being followed, if certain committees are not 
adhering to the basic rules of decorum, then we should have a 
discussion about that as well.
    So, again, I appreciate your testimony. And I am--and, 
again, we heard a lot of different ideas today, and we 
certainly value your contribution here.
    Did you want to----
    Mr. Rose. No.
    The Chairman. Oh, okay. You were just--okay. I am going to 
yield to Dr. Burgess.
    Dr. Burgess. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Takano, it is a little bit off topic, can I ask you, 
are the men and women who work at the Department of Veterans 
Affairs working remotely or are they back in the building?
    Mr. Takano. I don't know how to answer that. I mean, I have 
not been over there recently. And time--you know, things change 
very quickly. I mean, I have--so the answer is I don't know.
    Dr. Burgess. You know, it strikes me, and it has been a 
problem for sometime; it is not just during the pandemic and 
with remote working, but getting questions answered by veterans 
from the Department of Veterans Affairs takes a long time. And 
I don't know if you have done any oversight hearings as to has 
this problem increased with remote working at the Department?
    Mr. Takano. Just off the top of my head, I mean, I have to 
get back with you on that question. We have done some 
oversight. We have concerns about there has been a backlog of 
claims processing and because of the way exams get done and, 
yeah, the comp and pen exams. So there was a lot of issues 
there that I am not prepared to answer that question, but I 
will definitely get back to you about that, Dr. Burgess.
    Dr. Burgess. And I didn't mean to put you on the spot. It 
is--my office in the Rayburn Building is right across from the 
Hubert Humphrey Building. I don't think there has been a light 
on in that building for 2 years. I mean, it is working from 
home.
    I get the impression that the CDC is the same way. I feel 
like the FDA in a lot of instances is not onsite and working. 
Again, I know the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services is 
not in. It seems like it has lengthened the time that our 
constituents are required to get an answer to their questions.
    And the only reason I bring that up is we can't very well 
ask the men and women of the Health and Human Services, 
Department of Energy to go back into their buildings and get to 
work if we are not willing to abide by that ourselves. So there 
is a real downstream consequence of not recognizing that 
whatever was necessary to get us through the pandemic is now in 
the rearview mirror. Mrs. Fischbach outlined it very eloquently 
in the last panel, but we need to recognize it is in the 
rearview mirror and get back to work.
    This morning, our Doctors Caucus had a briefing with the 
head of the--the Director of the CDC, and I was grateful that 
she came on. It was an important opportunity for us to exchange 
ideas. Unfortunately, because of technology, the first 15 
minutes were kind of lost. And that is the reason I was late to 
get to this hearing, Mr. Chairman.
    But what came up in that briefing was concern about the 
loss of credibility that our Federal agencies have, in the 
CDC's case, because of conflicting information. And Mr. Hoyer 
tells us, well, everything was necessary over here, done with 
CDC guidance for mandatory masking, and yet at the same time, 
the Senate didn't. And so the public looks at that and says, 
this doesn't add up. This is not consistent. We don't know 
whether to believe what is coming out of our Federal agencies, 
our public health agencies. We don't know whether to believe 
that or not.
    And so then when they are confronted with losing their job 
because they don't do a vaccine, when the Federal Government 
says they have to, even though the Federal Government doesn't 
have the authority to do that, they get rightly frustrated, and 
oftentimes they take that frustration out on their Member of 
Congress. I am sure many of you have felt it as well.
    But, Mr. Rose, let me just ask you, is this your first trip 
up here?
    Mr. Rose, My first trip to Rules?
    Dr. Burgess. Yes.
    Mr. Rose. Yes.
    Dr. Burgess. Well, welcome. I thought it was. And, usually, 
we acknowledge a Member's first visit to this--to the Rules 
Committee. And welcome. We hope it is a first of many, now that 
you know where we are.
    Mr. Rose. Thank you.
    Dr. Burgess. Don't make yourself so scarce.
    The Chairman. Do you need to----
    Mr. Takano. May I be excused?
    The Chairman. Anybody need to question him?
    Mrs. Fischbach. Oh, I am so tempted, Mr. Chairman. I will 
not object. I will not object. He can go.
    Dr. Burgess. Yes, thank you for your participation. Thanks 
for answering my questions.
    Again, Mr. Rose, welcome to the Rules Committee. It is a--
as you can see, we are an unheralded but extremely important 
part of the function of this Congress.
    And, Mr. Westerman, I appreciate your comments. We heard 
from Mr. Cole when he was here how markups in the 
Appropriations Committee were done as--as markups were done in 
person. And I think that is important.
    Man, we have had all these reconciliation bills, the 
infrastructure bill, all this stuff that came through 
committees where--that I serve on as well, jurisdiction Energy 
and Commerce, jurisdiction on the Budget Committee. But the 
first actual hearing was here in the Rules Committee. And 
oftentimes, it is a bill that spent $1.8 trillion or $1.9 
trillion.
    But what I have noticed in the virtual markups is, because 
of the sake of expediency, the staff gets a lot of control. 
Committee staff gets a lot of control over how those markups 
are conducted, what amendments are going to be heard, what 
amendments are going to be made in order, which ones are going 
to be allowed to come to a recorded vote. And the structure of 
the hearing is changed because it is a virtual--a markup, 
rather, is changed because it is a virtual markup. And I just 
wondered if you had any experience with that in your committee.
    Mr. Westerman. Yeah. And I know it varies highly across 
committees, which I don't think it should be that way. If we 
are going to have rules, they should apply across the 
committees on the decorum and the way the hearings are held.
    I mentioned I was on the Transportation and Infrastructure 
Committee. Those, you can go to the meeting room, you can use 
the audiovisual equipment, the microphones are there. It is 
much better. Although, there is a large screen with a lot of 
squares on it with people who are coming remotely.
    The Natural Resources Committee, you literally have to take 
your laptop in, put earbuds in and--so that you are not 
disturbing other people with the sound coming across your 
computer.
    Dr. Burgess. Well, if I may, taking testimony in a hearing 
is one thing, but an actual markup where you are preparing the 
legislation then to come to us in a Rules Committee, an actual 
markup is different. And it is harder to do that remotely, at 
least that has been my observation.
    I was actually relieved to hear Chairman Cole--I am sorry, 
Ranking Member Cole--say that in the Appropriations Committee, 
they actually had in-person--not virtual but in-person markups. 
I found the virtual markups in Energy and Commerce to be 
cumbersome. In the Budget Committee, they were hopeless.
    And, again, you abdicate a lot of our input, our authority 
as Members of Congress, elected Members of Congress. And, 
obviously, it goes somewhere. Nature abhors a vacuum. So staff 
takes on that role and decides which amendments are going to be 
heard, which amendments are going to be allowed to have a vote, 
in the name of expediency, to get things to go, because these 
things are cumbersome sometimes and take a lot of time. The 
actual participation is sacrificed. I just wondered if you have 
experienced that in yours.
    Mr. Westerman. Absolutely. And I think--you know, I like 
coming to the Rules Committee because you all are in-person, 
because I can look around the room and see facial expressions, 
and it is a much better way to----
    Mr. Perlmutter. Gestures.
    Mr. Westerman. Gestures, yeah.
    Dr. Burgess. Strike that from the record.
    Mr. Westerman. But it allows that interaction. And one 
thing I have noticed having--you know, obviously been through a 
lot of committee hearings that were in person, is that the 
virtual hearings interrupt the dialogue. You know, a lot of 
times one member will be talking, and they may refer to another 
member, and somebody would say, would the gentleman yield, and 
you have a little bit of a dialogue. And it makes--I think it 
brings a lot more to the meeting. But if you are virtually and 
somebody interrupts to ask somebody else to yield, it just 
throws the whole meeting off.
    And then you get to all the connectivity issues. Especially 
on markups. You know, anytime, I believe, when we are voting, I 
would hope we would do that in person and not--I hope we move 
back to in-person meetings.
    Dr. Burgess. Yeah, I do too. And I appreciate your 
participation, Mr. Rose, your participation.
    I will yield back to the chairman.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    And I just want to--Mr. Westerman, you had mentioned that 
the only in-person Natural Resources hearing was with Secretary 
Haaland. And, you know, people were actually watching this 
hearing, and apparently at that hearing, it turns out there was 
a member who was COVID positive, who refused to wear a mask, 
and Chairman Grijalva, who is in several high-risk categories, 
caught COVID. So I guess I can understand why they didn't 
continue meeting in person. But, anyway, I just wanted to point 
that out for the record.
    I yield to Mr. Perlmutter.
    Mr. Perlmutter. Just quickly, I want to thank you, Mr. 
Chairman, I want to thank staff, both sides. I mean, we were in 
an emergency, and we needed to protect the Members, the staff, 
all of the witnesses, given COVID, and what we knew and what we 
didn't know about COVID. And the doctor--you know, we were 
learning on the go dealing with COVID.
    So I just want to thank everybody for allowing the 
government to continue, for us to be able to continue to 
operate, do it in a way that was safe, clearly not perfect, but 
it was an emergency.
    And at the end of the day, Mr. Rose can agree with me or 
disagree with me on that, but in Financial Services, it was 
really--we were stumbling for a while, but then we learned how 
to do it. And it is a big committee. And, you know, it would be 
Perlmutter votes whatever. And, you know, we learned that you 
got to call twice because somebody might fumble a little bit. 
And, you know, by the end, we can do this thing pretty quickly 
and pretty efficiently coming through an emergency.
    So I felt the rule, at the time, and I expressed this at 
the time, was too limited. I felt it should be more expansive, 
not limited to just COVID-related things. But, in the end, what 
we did was we allowed the government to continue and people to 
be safe with a virus that none of us understood, and it turned 
out to be pretty darn dangerous.
    Second thing I wanted to say was, for me--and there is 
other philosophies--but for me, the ability to allow my staff 
and others to work remotely, to testify remotely, whatever, if 
they do the job, I am okay. They don't have to be here. I don't 
have to see them. I don't--you know, and I like you when I pass 
in the hallway, and I like talking to you, but that doesn't 
mean it has to be here. If the job gets done, that suffices for 
me.
    The last thing, I believe, opposite of what some have 
testified, given the fact that we have done lots of conference 
calls when we first were kind of getting into this, whether it 
was within our caucuses or as committees, and then Zooms, the 
communication level on a pretty regular basis has increased 
among all--at least among--or on legislative issues, if you 
will, you know.
    And so I believe we should expand this rule. I think it 
should be ongoing. I think we are going to hold the House, and 
we should keep the rule in place. If Mr. Davis is correct, then 
he can change it. But I don't think it makes a lot of sense. I 
think we need to take technology and use it to our benefit.
    And I yield back.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    And I know Mr. DeSaulnier has another hearing to go to. 
Does anyone have any questions for him? We can let him go?
    You are free to go.
    Mr. DeSaulnier. I think I want to stay, Mr. Chair.
    The Chairman. Mrs. Fischbach.
    Mrs. Fischbach. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I will be brief 
because I mentioned it before. And, you know, if this was--if 
this was something that had to be done, and I wasn't here when 
it originally went into place, we need to stop now. We are over 
that. You know, we know what--we know what to expect.
    Most of the rest of the country is getting back to normal, 
and we need to get back to our business, get our business back 
to normal, and end the proxy voting. And if there is something 
that needs to be looked at with remote hearings, what--you 
know, with Mr. Perlmutter, then that needs to be examined.
    But, at this point, we are over the emergency, and we need 
to get back to normal and take the--you know, the advantage for 
the majority, take this--take the rule away now, the proxy 
voting rule away now because, admittedly, it gave that 
advantage to the majority. And I just--again, we are just 
missing so much without that personal interaction.
    And, with that, I yield back.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Mr. Raskin.
    Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I have taken some careful notes on these witnesses and the 
prior panels, and I am counting six different values that have 
been invoked as being implicated by the proxy rules or the new 
hearing rules. And let me just quickly state what they are.
    One is democracy, having the voice of the people 
represented. Second is Republican representation, meaning 
dialogue and discussion among Members. Third is friendships 
among Members. Fourth is civility among Members. Fifth is the 
efficiency of the legislative process. And sixth is etiquette 
and the appearances of things.
    And it seems to me that we sort of have had three different 
positions on the table. I do want to associate myself with Mr. 
Perlmutter's remarks about the past. I think what we did was an 
absolute necessity. And you are to be commended for your 
leadership, Mr. Chairman, which was historic in terms of rising 
to the occasion and getting us through the nightmare of COVID-
19, which has cost us nearly a million of our people and caused 
so many problems in the country.
    But I want to talk about the future, because now what we 
have the advantage of being able to look at what took place 
with COVID, and we are able to make a decision not in the 
context of the emergency and the crisis quite so much as 
before. And I would say that there is sort of three types of 
solutions that have been advanced that we could subject to the 
test of these six different values.
    One is the Gaetz position, we can call it that, which is 
that it is better for us not to be here whenever we don't need 
to be here. And so I guess that militates towards being absent 
is much--being absent as much as possible. And a rule that 
would get to that is sort of the one, I am not sure if he is 
supporting it, but the one that Mr. Perlmutter articulated of 
you can use proxy whenever you want, essentially.
    Mr. Perlmutter. I am supporting that.
    Mr. Raskin. He is supporting that. Okay. So we will call it 
the Gaetz-Perlmutter position for the record.
    Mr. Perlmutter. Oh, come on.
    Mr. Raskin. So, all right, which is basically you can opt 
out whenever you want to opt out of being physically present, 
and you can vote by proxy. That is in one extreme.
    The other extreme is you never allow it, and we compel 
physical presence in all cases for voting.
    And there is the one that--which I have tried to articulate 
based on our recent experience, which is that presence is to be 
presumed and favored in all circumstances, except when a person 
has a compelling medical reason that makes it impossible for 
them to come or a compelling family reason that justifies their 
absence.
    Okay. And I think, you know, if you quickly run down all of 
the values, I do think that the position I am outlining is the 
one that best advances every value that has been invoked by the 
Members who have come here today.
    First of all, in terms of Democratic representation of our 
constituents, I think--I mean, it is a tie between here, my 
rule and the Perlmutter-Gaetz rule. I mean, everybody is going 
to be able to vote a hundred percent of the time, which means 
their people will be a hundred percent represented. If we go 
with never allowing it, then there are going to be millions of 
people who are not represented in almost every vote that takes 
place on the House floor. And if somebody gets really sick, 
then a constituency could go for weeks or months without being 
represented.
    Okay. Republican representation, dialogue. Well, I would 
again argue that--that the compelling reason for voting proxy 
and participating--and being able to participate that way in 
terms of hearings advances maximum dialogue, because we are not 
losing the voice of people who are sick, or they have just lost 
a family member, or for--you know, they are medically 
compromised and they can't leave. We are losing their voice. We 
are losing the ability to get their views. So we are reducing 
Republican dialogue by saying it is only going to be the 80 
percent or 90 percent of the people who can be physically 
present.
    Civility. Well, I think, again, my system advances civility 
the best, because the presumption is we are there, we are 
respecting each other, but we also respect each other enough to 
know that people experience medical infirmities and family 
emergencies. And that is a gesture and an expression of 
civility too, to say, everybody goes through these things and 
we can accept that.
    Friendship. I don't know to what extent, you know, the 
Constitution or the people necessarily favor friendship, but it 
is clearly something that the Members have talked about. I 
think it is the exact same thing. I think that it promotes 
friendship among the Members like it provokes civility. There 
seems to be this presumption that if we are all physically 
present, everybody is nice to each other. I have been sitting 
on the floor with a Republican colleague, and I have had other 
Republican colleagues come up to us and yell ``traitor'' at 
that person. Okay. Face-to-face, 3 feet away. We have seen 
school board meetings where people show up and scream in each 
other's faces and talk about going home and getting their guns 
and so on.
    So you can be rude in person, you can be sweet in person. 
You can be nice on Zoom, you can be mean on Zoom. So I just 
think that the technology and the physical presence are 
indeterminate factors in terms of the behavior of our 
colleagues.
    In terms of efficiency, I think it promotes efficiency here 
to have the maximum participation of people. Sometimes people 
get sick or otherwise waylaid whose presence is needed, right. 
And so----
    And, finally, I do think, in terms of etiquette, I think 
your point is probably right that physical presence and never 
allowing it might--might best advance etiquette. Although the 
chair is correct that you can have rules of etiquette that 
apply to Zoom, that apply to physical presence. You know, I 
have seen people wearing sneakers on the House floor and 
sneaking on, you know, doing this or that. You can also 
violate, you know, rules of etiquette in person like you can do 
it on Zoom. But it does seem easier. I think you win on that 
point. But I would say that the etiquette point might be the 
least value, the lowest value of democracy, Republican 
dialogue, efficiency, and so on.
    So, Mr. Chairman--and I don't know whether either of you 
want to comment on my rundown of those different values, but I 
tried to systematize it a little bit because I like to try to 
think in a systematic way as possible because people are 
throwing in all kinds of different values and principals and 
then making judgments about them. And I think we need to try to 
discipline it.
    Mr. Rose. Since you coined one as the Perlmutter-Gaetz 
position, I wonder if you want to ascribe a name to the other 
two positions?
    Mr. Raskin. Well, the one of never allowing it--well, I 
think several people have said go back to never allowing a 
proxy. I don't know if somebody wants to have it named after 
them. I don't know, is that the Rose----
    Mr. Rose. No.
    Mr. Raskin. Okay. But I am happy to--I am happy to embrace 
the Raskin rule of the compelling medical or family reason.
    Did you have anything, Mr. Westerman?
    Mr. Westerman. Yes, sir. I commend you. I think you are a 
good notetaker in categorizing and systemizing things well. And 
I don't necessarily agree with your six points there.
    Mr. Perlmutter talked about it works, but I think we should 
be striving to what works best. And I still believe it works 
best when we are in person.
    And I don't want to get into the chairman of my committee's 
health records, but I don't think he caught COVID from that 
meeting we had in person. And I am pretty sure our members were 
very cognizant of wearing masks while Secretary Haaland was 
there. I think he had gotten COVID a year before that, and I 
think he even got another case of it when he was back home. But 
I just wanted to set the record straight on that.
    And, also, I don't think--you know, we can talk about the 
past, where we were, how we got there, the benefits of it, but 
I was hoping this was about the future, where we are going. And 
is it time to end virtual hearings? Is it time to come back and 
vote in person?
    I mean, I know when we voted for the Speaker, that there 
were COVID-positive Members that were allowed in the Chamber. 
There was even a Plexiglass container built up in the gallery 
to house them in. So, you know, there is--seems like there is 
always some political motivation behind what happens here.
    But, hopefully, going forward, my wish will be that we 
could get back to in-person meetings and get back to voting in 
person as well. And, again, I appreciate the committee having 
the hearing and hearing us out.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Any other questions?
    If there are no other questions, you are free to go. Thank 
you very much.
    Yeah, let me just again reiterate, this is not an either/or 
type of thing. The deal is, you can allow for there to be 
hybrid hearings or virtual hearings, but you may never utilize 
them, or you may utilize them once; it may make sense once. But 
the ability to have that option is something we want to--as we 
look to the future, do you want to preserve that?
    And I should say that proxy voting didn't end the Republic. 
And I think we all agree that presence is important, and more 
and more people understand that. And more and more people are 
here in person, and more and more committee meetings are in 
person. And that is the trend that we all want to go in. And, 
you know, it is one of the reasons why I got us back into this 
committee room as soon as the doctors and scientists said it 
was okay to do so.
    As I said, the pandemic is not yet over. A thousand people 
a day dying, 2,000 people yesterday. I think there are 
situations in the future, post-pandemic, that we heard here 
today where there might be exceptions, you know, where proxy 
voting might be useful.
    Again, I go back to Mr. DeSaulnier's testimony. Yeah, I 
mean, he has a compelling case here. And I don't think he wants 
his voters disenfranchised, and I don't think his voters want 
him not to be able to participate.
    While proxy voting wasn't created for a number of the 
situations we talked about here today, it has actually helped 
increase voting participation in the House, believe it or not. 
Based on recent vote analysis by CQ Roll Call, House Members 
participated in a record 98 percent of roll call votes taken in 
2021. You know, that is the highest rate of voting 
participation in the House since 1953, when they began tracking 
these numbers. More Members voting means more Americans are 
being represented in each vote.
    And I would say, I don't think--this is not about political 
advantage. The deal is, to the extent Democrats have a 
political advantage, it is that more Democrats were elected to 
Congress than Republicans. And if for some reason Mr. 
Perlmutter and I couldn't be here or if it meant the difference 
in a vote, you know, on an important vote, they would probably 
postpone the vote until we can get here.
    So this is not about anything other than giving people the 
opportunity during these difficult times or during difficult 
times in their life to be able to participate. Three-hundred-
and-eighty Members have used proxy voting, which means over 280 
million Americans have had their voices represented on the 
House floor through the proxy system.
    And, look, I want to suggest, after listening to our 
discussion, that there may be a case for a limited use of proxy 
voting in the future if there is a major natural disaster in 
your district, the death of somebody in your family, or a 
severe illness when you can't get on an airplane, where it is 
not safe. I mean, I think that is what we would be talking 
about.
    I am not yet with--I am not convinced that the Perlmutter-
Gaetz way is the way to go. But I think that those are good 
uses that could benefit the entire institution.
    I also want to say that, again, the remote committee 
proceedings have helped Congress hear from a more diverse list 
of witnesses from across the country, because, quite frankly, 
sometimes it costs a lot of money or people can't afford to 
miss work to come here and to testify. I mean, we have been 
able to do that. We should find more ways to stay engaged with 
our constituents, and having folks testify virtually I think is 
a net positive for this institution.
    Again, I think all of us, I think, are of the mindset that, 
to the extent possible, we should be here in person as much as 
possible, because there is benefit to that. But the stuff that 
we have done hasn't resulted in the end of our Republic or an 
undermining of this institution.
    And I would just close with this. Yeah, this is a very 
polarized Congress. We have a very polarized political 
situation in this country. It had nothing to do with proxy 
voting. Now, as Mr. Raskin pointed out, I mean, there are some 
pretty non-civil moments up close and personal. We ought to 
have a discussion about what we can do to lower the temperature 
here on that.
    But, in any event, I think this was a necessary thing. We 
have a lot to think about. Thank you for taking the time.
    Thank you to everybody on this committee for sticking with 
it.
    Thank you to the staff on both sides of the aisle for all 
that you have done.
    And there is nobody else here, so, with that, the committee 
stands adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 2:05 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]



[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    
                   [all]