Are You Looking for Your Representative?

Are You Looking for Your Representative?

Commentary

Almost everyone knows the classic children’s book, “Where’s Waldo”. Each page has faces all over the pages and you have to search for the hidden picture.

Now, let’s get to it. Find the Congressman.

I’m referring to the big vote recently to spend and tax $750 billion on top of the normal hyper-inflated $6 trillion federal budget. The media pundits claim that Democrats saved the world from total destruction by passing “historic climate change and health care” legislation. Already, the temperature is dropping.

But if this bill were so historical, then where was everybody?

It turns out 80 Democrats failed to show up for the floor debate and voted absentee by proxy (pdf). These members sent it in for the “most historical vote in years”.

This would be like a player not attending the World Series.

There were also some 70 Republicans who voted against the massive tax-and-spend bill by proxy. This is something that I cannot defend. There’s a big distinction between not showing up to vote and voting yes in order to change the law.

The House rules for proxy voting were changed in COVID. However, COVID has ended. You can be sure there weren’t anywhere near 80 House Democrats (or 78 Rs) with the virus. Proxy voting should only be used in exceptional circumstances.

Where were members of Congress? This is what we need. Are they present at fundraisers for campaigns? They were at a soccer match for children? They were meeting with lobbyists.

Remote work has become remote legislating. This is a big problem for Congress as a deliberative institution. I would guess that close to zero members even bothered to read the near-1,000-page bill. To vote, one congressman ran to the House in shorts and a shirt. We are sorry to interrupt your tennis match congressman.

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Is it too much for members of Congress to have to be there for work every day?

This all seems to me to be a violation of the representative’s moral obligation of showing up for votes on important issues and knowing what details they are voting into law. It’s easy to follow the leader in Congress today with its hyper-partisan divisions.

Do these members feel guilty that they voted to increase the new Biden spending by close to $4 trillion Are they at all ashamed that they’re going to sic 87,000 new IRS agents on middle-class Americans? Both the Senate and the House Dems acted like Chinese soldiers, marching in lockstep in unison–just over the cliff.

Here is the list of the 80 Democrats who voted yes by proxy below in the hopes that the people in these districts back home take note.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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Stephen Moore, a senior fellow with the Heritage Foundation and chief economist at FreedomWorks is co-founder of The Committee to Unleash Prosperity. His role as senior advisor economics to Donald Trump was his. He is the author of “Govzilla”: How America’s Relentless Growth in Government Is Putting it at Risk .”

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