Babies’ early months are full of milestones. First smiles, first solid foods, first congressional budget vote.
Four-week-old Sam, the newborn son of Colorado Democratic Rep. Brittany Pettersen, is well ahead of his peers on that last one.
Pettersen (the elder) is currently on maternity leave from congressional duties, but after being denied the option of voting remotely or having a proxy vote on her behalf, she packed up baby Sam and headed to D.C. to vote against the Republicans’ proposed budget Tuesday night.
“I wasn’t going to sit back and not vote for anything where I could potentially be the difference,” Pettersen told Colorado Public Radio.
The Republicans eked out a victory, with the budget blueprint passing 217 to 215, but Pettersen, who appeared on the House floor with her baby in her arms, said that she didn’t regret making the difficult trip to make her voice heard on behalf of her constituents.
“I knew this was going to be very close,” she said. “I’m very disappointed that we didn’t ultimately kill it, but our power is in the numbers that we have in the House for Democrats.”
She said that congressional colleagues met her at the airport to help with luggage, and had been lending a hand making sure mother and baby were fed and had everything they needed during their brief stay in D.C.
“Nothing is easy when you’re traveling with a newborn, and doing it alone was challenging,” she said. “Then just being here, because he sleeps one or two hours here and there, so I am exhausted.”
Pettersen is part of a bipartisan group sponsoring a bill that would allow new parents to vote remotely while on parental leave. It has not yet come to vote.
On X (formerly Twitter) Wednesday, Pettersen wrote, alongside a clip of herself speaking against the proposed budget plan on the floor, sleeping baby in tow, that “I have a message for Donald Trump: nobody fights harder than a mom.”
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