First-year Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.) angered Democrats on Wednesday by standing next to the table where party leaders monitor votes, giving the impression he was trying to eavesdrop on their conversations during a close roll call to increase the debt limit, POLITICO’s Patrick O’Connor reports.

During the vote, Schock, the youngest member of the House, loitered a few feet away from the computer where leaders watch votes as they’re tallied in the chamber’s voting machines, Democratic aides said.

Both parties have computers embedded in tables on the House floor, where staffers monitor roll call votes. Eavesdropping or simply hovering near the opposition’s table is apparently a big no-no — and rarely happens. But apparently a few Democrats thought the youthful Illinois Republican was an aide.

But this is all news to Schock. “This is ridiculous!” he told Shenanigans. “I think it’s funny. Clearly, they must think I’m more important than I am.”

Schock says he was standing in the aisle “going through my BlackBerry” — and that if someone “would have come up and said something, I would have moved.” When his aides told him he was being accused of snooping, he laughed. “Snooping? On what? I don’t even get it.”

And, he said, the loitering is mutual: “I went over to our whip desk and asked if there was some protocol, and they said, ‘No, look!’ and there were a ton of Democrats on our side, by our whip desk.”

So, you weren’t taking any credible information from the other side? “I didn’t know there was credible information,” he laughed. “I’m on our whip team, so I go around and ask people if they’re voting yes or no, but it’s no secret. Our computers are the same as their computers” in terms of the information being pulled up.

“The last place you do secret meetings is on the floor,” he added. “They’re going to send the freshman guy over there?”