Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Wednesday said he is “working on every possible accommodation” to make it easier for mothers to serve in Congress amid the impasse between GOP leadership and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) over parental proxy voting.
“Proxy voting aside, I am actively working on every possible accommodation to make Congressional service simpler for young mothers,” Johnson wrote on the social platform X. “As the pro-family party, our aim as Republicans is to support those principles while also defending our constitutional traditions.”
Asked by The Hill about what adjustments he is eyeing, Johnson cited a room for nursing mothers and potentially allowing mothers of young children to use their official funds to travel between their home districts and Washington.
“We’ve got a lot of ideas on the table,” he said. “We need a room for nursing mothers if they need that, that’ll be right off the House floor. We have a family room but there may be ways to improve access and make it even easier. We’re looking at the travel policies, potentially the use of [member representative allowance] to allow travel for mothers with young children to be able to transport them back and forth so they get more time with them.”
“We want to accommodate mothers who want to serve in Congress, and we’re the pro-family party so we’ll do that,” he added. “But we can’t do something that violates the Constitution or destroys the institution we serve in, and that’s what I’m afraid of. The proxy-vote gambit opens us a Pandora’s box and it’s one that I’m not gonna be involved in opening.”
The announcement from Johnson came one day after Luna and eight other Republicans banded with Democrats to tank a procedural vote in protest of leadership’s attempt to bury the parental proxy voting push, bringing key legislative business to a standstill on the floor.
Luna successfully executed a discharge petition to force a vote on Rep. Brittany Pettersen’s (D-Colo.) resolution that would allow lawmakers who give birth or lawmakers whose spouses give birth to have another member vote for them for 12 weeks. Johnson and his leadership team, however, have been opposed to the effort, arguing that proxy voting is unconstitutional and warning that allowing it for new parents would lead to an expansion of the practice in the future.
The House Rules Committee, as a result, advanced a rule Tuesday that included language that would essentially “turn off” privilege, blocking Luna and her allies from forcing action on the proxy voting legislation, or any similar legislation in the future — which Luna and her allies voted down.
Johnson’s news that he is eyeing accommodations for new mothers could be a potential way to break the impasse, or help soften Luna’s stance.
The Florida Republican has not commented on Johnson’s announcement.
