PRAIRIE DU CHIEN, WI – While Rep. Ron Kind was accompanying President Biden in La Crosse this week, he was “unable to physically attend proceedings in the House Chamber due to the ongoing health emergency.”
Just weeks after his abuse of Nancy Pelosi’s extended proxy voting policy was revealed, Ron Kind was blatantly shirking his duties to accompany President Biden to an ice cream parlor in La Crosse.
See below for excerpts and read the full story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
Citing a hardship due to the pandemic, U.S. Rep. Ron Kind was able to play hooky from Congress for a couple of days this week and still cast votes on a handful of bills and resolutions.
Kind spent Tuesday hanging out with President Joe Biden, a trip that included a stop for treats at The Pearl Ice Cream Parlor in La Crosse. The president was in western Wisconsin touting the $1.2 trillion infrastructure proposal hammered out with a bipartisan group of lawmakers.
Despite going MIA from his day job, Kind was able to get an excused absence because he claimed the pandemic prevented him from attending Monday and Tuesday’s floor session in person. Kind was then permitted to vote on seven bills by “proxy” with the help of a rep who was present.
Among the measures was one to remove all Confederate statues from public display in the U.S. Capitol and to repeal two-decades-old authorizations of the use of military force in the Middle East.
“I am unable to physically attend proceedings in the House Chamber due to the ongoing health emergency,” the La Crosse Democrat wrote in a letter to the clerk for the U.S. House of Representatives.