House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) called out House Democrats in today’s colloquy for abusing the proxy voting process and for holding bipartisan infrastructure negotiations hostage. In addition, Whip Scalise slammed President Biden’s weak leadership for resulting in an unprecedented level of crises that are hurting the American people and our allies around the world, and questioned when House Democrats would bring legislation to the Floor to address these self-created problems.   See highlights from the colloquy below.   On Democrats’ proxy voting scheme:  

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  “What I want to ask about something that's going to expire at the end of next week, and that is this proxy voting scheme that's been going on since May of last year. And from what the majority had presented when this got created was the reason that proxy voting was there is because we had a pandemic and things were shut down and people had trouble getting around and maybe were concerned about the virus and not wanting to leave maybe their home or their local community. Obviously, now, with the vaccine readily available for any American who wants to take it, with more states opening up, and you are seeing even here in Congress many committees that were not having in-person hearings are now getting back to in-person hearings.   “So, what I would ask the gentleman is when proxy voting expires on July 3, can we let Congress get back to the normal work and not renew proxy voting? Because as we’ve seen there is a lot more cooperation, a lot more agreements you can reach when you’re here in person working together then you just can get on a Zoom or WebEx call or just somebody staying at home proxy voting and not coming here to Washington when everyone who wants to can come. And, you know, we’ve looked at what this has done. It’s hurt the institution in our opinion. But there are six Democrats, who since this got started last year, have never come to vote in person except for the vote for the Speaker of the House because that is a vote that you cannot cast by proxy. And so, if they were able to get here for the vote for Speaker in January, yet, on every other vote, not cast a single vote in person then they clearly not because have no ability to get to Washington. And, it feels like there’s an abuse of this proxy voting that’s shown it needs to end. And, I don’t know if there’s an expectation next week that the majority would renew this, we’d urge strongly that we let it expire on July 3 and then get back to the work that we do in person.”   On Democrats holding a bipartisan infrastructure deal hostage in order to raise taxes:  

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  “As we look at some of the bills that are going to be coming to the Floor next week, I know there's been a lot of talk about infrastructure, as we saw over these past few days, there's a bipartisan bill that's being worked through — mostly in the Senate — where a number of Republicans and Democrats had seemed to reach an agreement on what would be considered traditional infrastructure without tax increases. It's now become a little more confused by this suggestion that maybe the Speaker has said it has to be tied to a budget reconciliation bill that would possibly raise taxes, which is not surely where we are. It doesn't seem to be where the bipartisan group in the Senate is.   “For over the decades, we never really had a disagreement on what infrastructure means. I think most Americans would recognize the definition we have always gone by on a bipartisan basis, and it’s: roads, bridges, waterways, ports. I think recently both sides would agree broadband is something that we would include in that definition. But, that is what always was the traditional definition of infrastructure by both parties. It seems like on the majority side they’re trying to change the definition to include extraneous things which were not part of the Senate bipartisan agreement, but the other new addition seems to be this idea that a bill, a shell — reconciliation bill to raise taxes would be something that would maybe hold hostage the rest of the bipartisan agreement. I hope that's not the road we go down.”   On President Biden’s self-created crises and weak leadership:  

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  “I do want to ask about some of the crises we are seeing around the country. You look at inflation continuing to be a growing problem. We had in our committee the Federal Reserve Chairman, Mr. Powell, just a few days ago, talked about the concerns with, you know, five percent inflation.   “We continue to see whether it's gasoline prices, double-digit increases, everything we buy at the grocery [store], you are starting to see larger increases in costs for grocery items, housing if you are just trying — to buy a house, renovate your house. Those costs are higher. If you want an appliance you might have to wait six months. Much of that is because of the labor shortage. Every small business you talk to says the biggest impediment they have to getting their businesses back up again is that the federal government is paying people more money not to work than to go back to work. When you have millions of job openings, it doesn't seem to make sense that we are allowing people to be paid not to work when businesses are trying, struggling to get back on their feet from this pandemic.   “So, I don't know if there is an anticipation to bring legislation to start confronting some of those problems. Clearly, we see the Vice President at the border today. While she's not at the areas of the border where you see the biggest increases in illegal crossings, we know that there is a crisis in the United States and it's not just people in South and Central America coming across. We are seeing people from Middle Eastern countries. There have been people on the Terrorist Watch List that are coming. I hope that as she comes back from that trip, hopefully, she's met with Border Patrol agents. People that have told us what the problems are. The President could address all of this today by reversing some of his executive actions that have opened the border. But if he doesn’t, I hope Congress would look at bringing legislation to confront a lot of those challenges that I talked about.”