Mike Gallagher

I don't particularly like proxy voting. I am all for getting away with it.

Your Members squabbled for months on end over this process.

The quote/unquote, bipartisan infrastructure bill was the biggest surrender of institutional authority by this body that I have ever seen in 20 years.

The quote that the Senate wrote never came through committee over here.

I think if you read the text of the Constitution, words like 'meeting,' 'assemble,' 'attendance,' 'present,' 'absent,' 'recess,' 'sitting,' 'seat,' it clearly requires a Member of Congress to be actually present.

I believe my constituents sent me here to vote for them, and I believe that.

I believe the Constitution clearly believed that we should be--or articulated we should be present.

We all take an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States.

We break down the human interactions when we blow up the whole point of us coming together as Congress.

Productivity by a handful is not the people's House.

That is a very big statement. That is a debatable statement, one we ought to be debating.

The ultimate disenfranchisement of voters? The lack of any power of any one Member of Congress.

There is no question it is obvious and inarguable, to the point of being self-evident now, that people are abusing proxy voting.

They are abusing proxy voting so they can have a longer weekend, right? Because it is an inconvenience to come to D.C.

That is disenfranchising and that it is causing distrust in the institution.

We haven't declared war. That is a constitutional requirement. We have not declared war.

The institution is broken.

How can you maintain the integrity of the institution if you are institutionalizing lies?

I think it is just about the truth. Because when you proxy vote...you have to sign a piece of paper that says, I am unable to physically attend proceedings in the House Chamber due to the ongoing public health emergency.

We lose our ability to exercise our oversight responsibility with executive branch officials and private sector officials.

Proxy voting has been a disaster that has torn this institution apart, and I will continue to believe that because I have witnessed it, and we have all witnessed it.

I tend to fall down in the more traditional category there.

I think there are a lot of lessons to be learned there, and she did it the right way.

I don't think it is constitutional for us to cast these votes.

We have an obligation to defend the Constitution.