Washington, D.C. – Today, Ranking Member Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) appeared on C-SPAN's Washington Journal to discuss our process for reopening the House and recommendations from the House Administration Committee to get Congress operating effectively and safely. Davis worked on a plan with Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Rules Committee Ranking Member Tom Cole (R-Okla.) to reopen the House.

On What Has Been Done Thus Far to Reopen the House:

"First off, we had a very successful vote series to pass the second round of funding for our Paycheck Protection Program. We were able to make sure that the Capitol remains safe. Almost every single office in both the Republican and Democrat caucuses are teleworking, so there's virtually zero staff running around the House Office Buildings, just the staff that works in the Capitol and those that are on the floor. If you turned on C-SPAN during those debates, you saw people wearing masks, people orderly in a very orderly fashion, coming in and out to vote. Vote series were longer, but they were safer, and each voting machine was cleaned between votes. I think we can safely get back to the Capitol and do it in a way that protects everybody."

On Congressional Staff Continuing Remote Operations:

"Well, the Attending Physician of the Capitol, he has recommended that offices still remain in telework mode. I can tell you we did a lot of preparation on the House Administration Committee. This was a bipartisan success. I'll give Chairperson Lofgren a lot of credit working with me. We made sure that each and every office in the House had access to equipment and they were ready to telework when the call came out to make that happen. I anticipate teleworking to be a part of the Capitol processes in the Capitol office operations for not just months to come but for years to come. I think we can safely layout some protection measures to ensure that staffers aren't huddled into small offices without having the opportunity to telework. Those are the things that Leader McCarthy, and also Ranking Member Tom Cole and I, we laid out in a plan that Leader McCarthy released today that would talk that talks about how we safely returned to the Capital and really most importantly what our vision of what Congress looks like after the coronavirus. That's the issue that I think we all need to take a step back and realize what we think we're going to see when we come back and then how we operate within that was it that viewpoint."

On Restarting the Committee Process:

"Well, that's a suggestion Leader McCarthy gave to Majority Leader Hoyer in our first meeting of our bipartisan task force that was put together after the proxy voting process was pulled by the Majority, he suggested coming back in a phased process. Remember, Washington, D.C., as we knew it on March 13th, is not the same as Washington, D.C. today around Capitol Hill. Restaurants are closed you can't walk into the Capitol and see a flood of staffers let alone constituents and people visiting the nation's capital. It's virtually barren. So if we're sending people back to committee hearings on a rotating basis, you can get a lot of stuff done because there's nobody around. You can make sure that you focus on those committee duties, and we've got some pretty important bills that we need to pass in a bipartisan way. Be it the National Defense Authorization Act that funds our military. We've got to come back and do our appropriations bills. We ought to be able to have our Appropriations Subcommittees meet on a basis that they can come in and really drill down and focus on the work ahead along with the committee I serve on - Transportation and Infrastructure. We've got a water resources bill and a highway reauthorization that we could come back to. We could safely socially distance ourselves maybe utilizing the House Floor as our committee room, and we can work out our differences in a bipartisan way and do it safely and make sure that we protect everyone involved."

On Getting Back to Washington:

"Well, it was kind of like ping pong last week. One day we said we were coming. We were told by the majority we were coming back to Washington. In less than 24 hours they changed their minds. You know that that's part of the issue that we have. We can come together, and we do, in a very bipartisan way, to talk about how do we use technology to talk about implementing it into our House operating systems and our official responsibilities, but at the same time, we have to respect the fact that there are no rules in the House Rules that would allow for remote voting or the ill-advised proxy voting that the Democrats proposed last week. So, if we are serious about governing and we're serious about talking about helping the American people, we've got to get back to Washington."

On Why Proxy Voting Comes with Serious Concerns:

"Well keep in mind just a few short years ago when Republicans took over the house in 1995, after forty-plus years of straight Democrat majorities, we got rid of proxy voting. Proxy voting had been abused by Leadership in the committees, and it's something that effectively took away the voice of many individual Members. Just bringing proxy voting back I think has some circumstances that were not taken into consideration yet, and frankly, the worst part of it was, it was a process that had zero Republican input. It was a process that was put together by the Democratic majority, told us this is what was going to happen, it was needed in case of an emergency, and frankly, they pulled the bill about a few hours before I was supposed to go testify in front of the House Rules Committee while I was in DC, and then we subsequently voted on a piece of legislation that didn't need proxy voting we had more than was needed for a quorum. Members of Congress are… itching to get back to work. We're itching to get back to Washington, D.C. We want to solve even more problems than what we did a week ago, and we've got to stop with the partisanship coming out of the Majority with plans like proxy voting that don't fit within the House rules, and frankly, can be abused by Leadership once this is implemented during a so-called emergency like they were trying to do."

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