Democrats Unable to Return to D.C. for Massive Debt Deal Vote

Two members of the House Democratic minority say they are unable to participate in a massive coming vote on a bipartisan deal to raise the federal debt ceiling before the June 5 deadline to default, primarily due to a rule change implemented by Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

On Tuesday morning, North Carolina Democratic Representive Deborah Ross tweeted she had tested positive for COVID-19 and would be unable to vote.

Four hours later, Minnesota Democrat Angie Craig’s office announced the congresswoman had fractured her ankle, and that her doctor had advised her not to fly ahead of her scheduled surgery Thursday.

During the last Congress, this would not have been an issue. During the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Democratic majority in the House passed legislation allowing members to vote by proxy out of concern for spreading the virus among older, more vulnerable members.

Republicans would later sue then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over the policy and, while 80 percent of members would go on to use it regularly, a Brookings Institution analysis from 2020 showed, McCarthy vowed to end the practice once the GOP majority took over.

“No more proxy voting,” McCarthy tweeted in the early days of his control of the chamber. “Effective immediately, Members of Congress have to show up to work if they want their vote to count.”

That policy, however, could come back to haunt him on the eve of the biggest vote of his short tenure.

Republicans hold a narrow nine-vote majority in the House of Representatives. And while McCarthy said he believes he has the support of approximately “95 percent” of his caucus heading into Wednesday’s vote, numerous members of McCarthy’s caucus—including South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace and Texas Congressman Wesley Hunt, who left his wife at the hospital to help elect him speaker—have publicly stated they will vote against the deal, creating a scenario in which some Democrats will need to cross the aisle to vote for the bill.

Ross, as it turns out, was one of those votes, writing in a tweet announcing her illness that she supported the deal the Biden White House had brokered with Republicans to raise the debt ceiling and avert default. Craig’s position was a little more uncertain, though she did say in a tweet several days prior to the vote that she hoped to rein in “wasteful spending” after a deal to raise the debt ceiling.

The direction Democrats will take on the bill, however, remains uncertain.

As the Biden White House—and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries—sought to whip votes for the deal at the start of the week, California Representative Ro Khanna, a Congressional Progressive Caucus member, said on Sunday he believed a “large majority” of his party’s membership was “in flux” over whether they should support a deal that imposes proposals like new work requirements for social safety net programs and stringent limits on future spending.

And while whip counts are one thing, public opinion is another. According to Pew Research polling from January, approximately 64 percent of Republicans said their party’s leaders should stand up to President Joe Biden even if it makes it more difficult to address key issues. Fifty-eight percent of Democrats said they believed Biden should work to cross the aisle to work with Republicans, even if it means disappointing voters.

Newsweek has reached out to McCarthy’s office via email for comment.