Burgess Owens: “proxy voting is as American as apple pie. We have millions and millions of votes cast by proxy all the time. Private…”

“proxy voting is as American as apple pie. We have millions and millions of votes cast by proxy all the time. Private industry, which we are so fond of replicating, uses proxy voting all the time. Americans understand proxy voting. They understand that decision-makers who have numerous obligations sometimes use proxy voting as a convenience. They trust certain people and allow them to vote by proxies on very important matters that affect their lives. I am not going to quarrel, however, with a Majority that wants to limit their own flexibility and their own ability to conduct some awesome business matters here that are the province of the Majority by insisting on eliminating proxy voting. If they want to do that, I am not going to really quarrel with them. I am going to discuss, instead, something else that is as American as apple pie, and that is voting by simple majority vote. Later on we are going to discuss a three-fifths requirement, a requirement that three-fifths of the Members must approve of any income tax increase. I want to say that is very un-American. That runs against the grain of the Constitution, and the general way Americans conduct business. What they are doing is empowering a minority of people to block any legislation. The House has 435 voting Members. Some simple arithmetic. There are 435 voting Members. A simple majority is 218. Three-fifths of the House is 261, instead of 218. Two-fifths of the House is 174 votes.…”