- Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has been vacationing in Costa Rica this week.
- That's despite the House voting on a major government spending bill that she's dubbed the "omnimonster."
Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has had a busy week.
On Monday, she got into a Twitter spat with fellow far-right Rep. Lauren Boebert over the Colorado congresswoman's criticism of Greene's past belief in "Jewish space lasers." On Tuesday, she penned a lengthy Twitter thread on her support for Kevin McCarthy to be Speaker of the House, later following it up with an op-ed in the Daily Caller on the same topic on Wednesday.
She accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of being the US's "shadow president" and skipped his historic address at the Capitol on Wednesday, later posting an image of a Capitol rioter edited to look like the Ukrainian leader carrying a stack of dollars.
On Thursday, she finalized her divorce with her now ex-husband, Perry Greene.
And on Friday, she cast a vote against a $1.7 trillion government spending bill she dubbed the "omnimonster," which will fund the government through most of 2023, provides billions in new aid to Ukraine, and includes reforms to the Electoral Count Act.
The entire time, the Georgia congresswoman was vacationing with her kids — and her ex-husband — in Costa Rica.
"For the past 15 years, Congresswoman Greene and her family always take a trip together at Christmas time. And this year was extra important," said a spokesman from her congressional office. "All she's done is follow Nancy Pelosi's rules and she's happy she could proudly vote NO to the $1.7 trillion Omni monster."
The spokesman later added that Greene "not only did her job as Congresswoman, but she also did her most important job: being a Mom. She's spending much-needed and much-deserved quality time with her children and their father."
An anonymous tipster informed Insider on Thursday that they had been on the same flight as Greene and her family from Atlanta to the Central American nation on Sunday.
The tipster provided a photograph of Greene on the plane, and told Insider that the congresswoman, who is worth millions of dollars, was seated in first class.
"My parents are her constituents, and I thought it was funny how they are freezing right now in Rome, GA while she's in CR on vacation," wrote the tipster. Temperatures this week in the northwest Georgia city have averaged just over 37 degrees Fahrenheit, according to Weather Underground.
The tipster said they also saw Greene at the airport in Liberia, Guanacaste with her family at the passport check, baggage claim, and then customs.
Insider is not naming the resort where the congresswoman and her family are staying.
A man who answered a number associated with the resort property confirmed that Greene was staying at the property and is a client of the resort, but declined to say when she had arrived, or how long she would be staying.
But he offered to pass a message from Insider to the congressman.
"You understand, she's on vacation," the man told Insider.
Nonetheless, the congresswoman has continued to cast votes while out of the country.
She filed a letter with the Clerk of the House of Representatives on Monday stating that she was "unable to physically attend proceedings in the House Chamber due to the ongoing public health emergency," and designated Republican Rep. Barry Moore of Alabama to cast votes on her behalf.
Proxy voting is a pandemic-area procedure that was originally designed to allow members of Congress to avoid traveling to Washington, DC in order to minimize the risk of exposure to COVID. Since then, members of Congress have used it for all sorts of non-COVID reasons.
Nearly 200 other members of the House voted by proxy on Thursday and were also set to miss the omnibus vote on Friday, many of them likely leaving town early to avert travel delays caused by historic winter storms ahead of the holidays.
But Republicans, including Greene, have harshly criticized the practice, despite often using it themselves. Greene even introduced a bill in March of this year to eliminate the practice. "Now that COVID is over and we're back to normal life, Congresswoman Greene is ready to end proxy voting," Greene spokesman Nick Dyer told Insider in May.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has vowed to end proxy voting if he becomes Speaker of the House in January.
This story has been updated with a further statement from Greene's office noting that her ex-husband is also in Costa Rica with the family.