House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of going against the Founding Fathers by keeping the House chamber closed and exploring the practice of voting by proxy.
McCarthy, a California Republican, was on Fox News' "Life, Liberty & Levin" Sunday and said "the founders would be ashamed" at what Pelosi is doing.
"This isn't about reopening a campus. This is about restoring the voice of America during this critical time. So if we are not meeting, you don't have input. You don't have the Americans' voice coming through. It empowers the speaker even greater," McCarthy said.
McCarthy added that Pelosi wants to institute voting by proxy, a process that would involve members telling Pelosi they support a specific bill and then Pelosi casting their vote for them instead of the full House gathering for a floor vote.
"Our founders would be ashamed. They expect us to assemble, but what she is doing [is going] directly against the founders' article one, four, five or six because the more she keeps us away, she can stay in San Francisco near her freezer, write the bill."
He added that American voters "cannot hold accountable somebody that passes that vote onto somebody else."
"Now, we've proven we can come back. The Senate is back. And we can work. I've actually laid out a plan for more than a month of how we can do this in a safe manner. Just the states are opening up, but if you look at the history of America, Congress has met during the Civil War when there were fights not far from here, during every war, during every crisis, during 9/11, Congress was still able to meet and carry out the role they should be doing, and we should be doing that now."
The Senate floor is open but the House, which has 435 members, remains closed due to social distancing guidelines to help slow the spread of the coronavirus that has infected 4.2 million people and killed 284,000 people worldwide. More than 1.3 million Americans have been sickened and more than 80,000 have died.
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