On Friday, February 26, 2021, the House of Representatives was working late into the night on the biggest bill of the year — a $1.9 trillion Covid relief package. That day, Greg Steube filed an official letter with the Clerk of the House. It said he could not be there.

The letter used the exact language House rules require: "I am unable to physically attend proceedings in the House Chamber due to the ongoing public health emergency."

He was not sick. He was not quarantined. He was in Orlando, listed as a speaker at CPAC — the Conservative Political Action Conference — an indoor political gathering where, as one watchdog group later put it, many participants refused to wear masks. CBS News reported that Steube was one of four members slated to address the conference that same Friday.

So he handed his vote to a colleague and went to the conference.

What he actually skipped

This is not a case of a member missing a routine procedural vote. The House worked through the night on the American Rescue Plan. Steube's proxy cast a "no" on the rule that let the bill come to the floor, which passed 219 to 210 at 11:18 p.m. that Friday. Then, at 2:01 in the morning on Saturday, February 27, his proxy cast another "no" on final passage of the bill itself, which passed 219 to 212.

Two of the most consequential votes of that Congress, on what CNN called "the massive $1.9 trillion Covid relief plan" — and Southwest Florida's congressman was at a political conference, with a colleague pressing the button for him.

He is entitled to vote no. Plenty of Republicans did. What he was not entitled to do was tell the Clerk of the House something that wasn't true in order to be somewhere else.

Nine months earlier, he sued to stop exactly this

Here's the part that turns a bad look into hypocrisy.

Proxy voting was added to the House rules in May 2020 as a pandemic measure. Steube voted against it — the resolution passed 217 to 189, and the entire Republican conference opposed it.

Then he went further. On May 27, 2020, Steube put out a press release announcing he had signed onto Kevin McCarthy's lawsuit to have proxy voting declared unconstitutional. His own words in that release:

"House Democrats' proxy voting scheme would allow Members of Congress to cast votes on behalf of American citizens from entirely different districts and states who never elected them for representation. We will not tolerate this unconstitutional attempt to upend 200 years of precedent and silence the voice of the American people."

And read the next part of his own press release closely:

"By signing onto this lawsuit, Steube and fellow Republican Members of Congress are committing to refrain from lending votes via proxy or placing votes via proxy on behalf of other Members."

That is a written commitment, published by his own office, on his own congressional website. He promised not to do the thing. Nine months later he did the thing — and did it so he could go to a political conference.

The commitment was still sitting on his website. It's still there today.

A watchdog group asked for an ethics investigation

Two weeks after CPAC, on March 10, 2021, the nonpartisan Campaign for Accountability filed a letter with the House Committee on Ethics about the 13 Republicans who did this. Steube was named in the complaint.

The group asked the committee to say plainly that members "may not claim that the public health emergency wrought by Covid-19 prevents them from personally voting on the House floor when, in fact, they simply prefer to attend other political events." It added: "Submitting such untruthful statements to the Clerk of the House should be considered conduct that does not reflect creditably upon the House."

"Untruthful statements." That's the accusation, in writing, from a watchdog group, against our congressman.

CfA's executive director, Michelle Kuppersmith, put it in plainer English:

"Members claiming the pandemic required them to skip votes so they can attend a political conference is like high schoolers forging a doctor's note to play hooky. It's disgraceful to see top government officials cavalierly treating a crisis that has killed more than half a million Americans like a get out of jail free card."

She also said the members who did it "made it clear they value political opportunism over their roles as members of Congress."

The excuses don't hold up

The defense offered at the time was that the pandemic wording is just boilerplate. A spokesman for Rep. Ted Budd told CBS News that "mentioning the pandemic in the letter is the standard language that both parties are required to use to proxy vote." Rep. Ralph Norman told CNN that "that's the only thing you could check."

Fine. But that argument only works for someone who thought proxy voting was legitimate in the first place. Steube didn't. He voted against it, sued to kill it, called it unconstitutional, and signed a document saying he would refuse to use it. If the form's only available reason was one that didn't apply to him, the honest option was obvious: skip the conference and go vote.

And we know that option existed, because somebody took it. CBS News reported that a spokesman for GOP Whip Steve Scalise confirmed Scalise canceled his own CPAC speech because of the votes that Friday evening. The number-two Republican in the House gave up his speaking slot to be on the floor. Steube gave up the floor to keep his speaking slot.

To be clear, Democrats have abused the same form. Four Texas Democrats proxied their votes that same day to go meet President Biden, and Kevin McCarthy had previously hammered two Florida Democrats for filing pandemic proxy letters and then attending a SpaceX rocket launch. That's a fair criticism — and it's exactly the standard Steube's own party set. He then failed it himself, in his own state.

He still doesn't show up

The CPAC story is five years old now. The habit isn't.

In May 2025, constituents stood outside Steube's Sarasota office asking for a public town hall. The Democratic Women's Club of Sarasota County said that "despite repeated requests for a meeting, the only response Steube and his staff have given is that he and his staff are too busy to meet with constituents." His communications director gave the local ABC affiliate one sentence, beginning with "While we have no comment."

The following week, out-of-town Democrats held the town hall for him. Senator Chris Murphy and Rep. Maxwell Frost came to Sarasota to take questions inside Steube's own district because he wouldn't.

There's a pattern here, and it's simple. When there's a camera, a friendly crowd, and a microphone, Greg Steube is there. When there's a hard vote at 2 a.m. or a room full of neighbors with questions about their health coverage, he's busy.

Why this one matters

A lot of political stories are arguments about values, where reasonable people land in different places. This isn't one of those. This is a paperwork question with a paper answer.

He signed a letter saying a public health emergency kept him from the House floor. He was at an indoor political conference, on a speakers list, in his own state. He had promised in writing, on his own website, never to vote by proxy at all. A watchdog group told the Ethics Committee it looked like a false statement to the Clerk of the House.

That's not a difference of opinion. That's a man who found the House floor less important than a speaking slot, and filed a false reason to get away with it.

Florida's 17th District deserves a representative who shows up — to the votes, and to us.

Source

This post is based on CNN's reporting: "More than a dozen Republicans tell House they can't attend votes due to 'public health emergency.' They're slated to be at CPAC." (February 26, 2021) and "Watchdog group requests investigation into 13 GOP lawmakers for misusing proxy voting" (March 10, 2021), with additional reporting from CBS News, the Campaign for Accountability, Steube's own congressional press release, and House roll-call records.