Can Congress save the economy, stop the pandemic and socially distance, all at once?

WASHINGTON — Dick Durbin knew they were doing it wrong.

As the senior senator from Illinois stood at the lectern for a Capitol Hill press conference about the coronavirus response this week, he winced as he thought about all the ways Congress is violating the rules that health officials are urging Americans to follow to prevent the spread of the pandemic.

“Those guidelines call for working from home, which we’re certainly not doing,” Durbin said. “Those guidelines say don’t go into a meeting of more than 10 people — I’m not going to count how many are in this room.”

The spread of the coronavirus has confronted Congress with the urgent task of funding the response and shoring up an economy in free fall, and it has so far passed two major bills and is now turning to what could become a trillion-dollar stimulus package.

But after two members of Congress announced they had tested positive for the virus on Wednesday night, and with more taking measures to quarantine themselves, the crisis has also forced the tradition-laden body to face urgent practical questions about how, exactly, its members should practice social distancing. It’s a job that by definition requires crowding into staid chambers and lots of in-person meetings.

“You take 535 people, send them out to every corner of the country to shake as many hands as they can on a weekend, meet as many people as they can, and then all come back to a space that’s more crowded than any high school auditorium in America,” said Representative Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat, as he worked from home in Salem on Thursday.

“I think Congress is woefully unprepared,” he added, “and I’m not proud of that.”

Over the past couple of weeks, many congressional offices have transitioned to working from home, which has led some offices to scramble for laptops and to get calls routed from their offices to cellphones and strained the capacity of the VPN network used by Senate staffers.

But there is one aspect of congressional business that has never been possible to do via teleworking: voting. In recent days, however, a growing number of members of Congress have called on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell to allow them to vote remotely during the crisis — a move that would allow lawmakers to avoid traveling and convening in large groups. But it would upend more than two centuries of history and require a colossally complex change in House and Senate rules.

“Just to see so many people gathered on the floor is not what we can be doing any longer," said Representative Eric Swalwell of California, who, with Representatives Katie Porter of California and Van Taylor led more than 40 House members on both sides of the aisle in signing a letter urging Pelosi and House minority leader Kevin McCarthy to consider adopting the practice.

Swalwell said he was worried about how lawmakers could pass legislation if they are sick or unable to travel to the Capitol.

A similar push is happening in the Senate, too. On Thursday, Durbin, a Democrat, and Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, a Republican, introduced a joint resolution that would amend the Senate’s standing rules to implement remote voting during national crises.

“It’s during times like this, when we have a pandemic affecting every corner of society and we are asking people to stay in their homes, that we should have the ability to convene the Senate and get our work done even if we can’t be in the Capitol,” Portman said in a statement.

In recent days, Pelosi and McConnell have been loath to move toward remote voting. But during a conference call of the House Democratic Caucus on Thursday, Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, the chair of the Rules Committee, said he was reviewing guidelines and options to find the best way for the House to vote on major legislation while complying with CDC recommendations, according to a person familiar with the call.

“I share the concerns of many members regarding the number of members on the House floor at any one time,” wrote House majority leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, earlier on Thursday. “I therefore expect that the House will adjust our voting procedures in order to follow the CDC’s recommendations.”

Remote voting is not the only way for Congress to pass legislation without crowding into the House and Senate, made more concerning because so many lawmakers are older and at greater risk from coronavirus. McConnell has already extended voting time to allow fewer members of the Senate to be on the floor at the same time, a procedure also under consideration in the House. (That did not stop senators like John Kennedy of Louisiana from standing close enough to Richard Shelby of Alabama to pat him on the back during a vote Wednesday, however.)

There is also the possibility of using “unanimous consent,” in which bills are adopted unanimously if there is no objection, though it would be unusual for a bill as complex as a stimulus passage to be approved that way.

The possibility of remote voting has been raised multiple times before, including by former governor John Kasich of Ohio when he was a congressman in 1993 — but it goes against 231 years of institutional norms.

“You’re talking about sort of reinventing the machinery of government, and what does this do to the Democratic process and the exchange of ideas?” asked Raymond W. Smock, who was the House’s historian from 1989 to 1995. “I can’t imagine they’re going to have serious debates over issues on Skype!”

Smock said that he was not aware of a time when the House or Senate had used absentee or remote voting, and he knew of no existing rule that would allow it.

And it is not just the leadership who may be uncomfortable with the idea of remote voting.

“It should be a last resort,” said Moulton, who did not sign onto the House members’ letter. “One of the last things that keeps Congress functioning today is the fact that we all have to come together and interact when we vote.”

Lori Trahan, of Massachusetts’ Third District, signed the letter, calling remote voting “a key part of maintaining continuity in operations.”

“These are unprecedented times," she said. "I think we need to unprecedented measures in unprecedented times.”

Members of Congress are struggling to figure out how to follow best practices in a pandemic. Trahan said she is considering driving to Washington instead of flying whenever she is next called back to vote. Moulton said he rushed on and off the floor without stopping to talk to anyone when he voted to pass the second part of the coronavirus legislation late Friday, (sic.)

And Representative Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who was in the House chamber briefly on Thursday to act as speaker pro tempore, said staff arranged it so he would not have to touch anything.

“I could just read what I needed to read, and everything had been disinfected,” he said. Raskin thinks that most members would be reluctant to deploy remote voting for anything but the most extreme circumstances.

“Something very big would be lost if that become the standard operating procedure,” Raskin said, “but on the other hand there are big numbers of people talking about how to provide legislative leadership and continuity through a public health emergency based on a contagion.”

The two congressman who have tested positive for coronavirus, Ben McAdams, a Utah Democrat, and Republican Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, were quarantining themselves in Utah and Washington.

“It is important that everyone take this extremely seriously and follow CDC guidelines in order to avoid getting sick and mitigate the spread of this virus,” Diaz-Balart wrote.