[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 158 (Tuesday, September 14, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Page S6507]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              CORONAVIRUS

  Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, last week, President Biden announced 
that he had lost patience with the American people and that he was 
demanding people get a vaccination.
  Now, I have had the vaccine. I am grateful for the vaccine. But it is 
an entirely different issue for the President of the United States to 
wag his finger at the American people and to say: I know what you have 
chosen, but I choose something different, and you are going to follow 
me.
  To literally instruct every employer with 100 employees or more, 
every Federal contractor, every Federal employee to bend to the will of 
the President and take this injection, that is a very different thing.
  There are over 39 million Americans right now, that we know of, that 
have already had COVID-19, have survived it, and have natural immunity. 
The President's demand for a vaccine ignored those almost 40 million 
Americans that already have natural immunity. His demand was: I know 
you have natural immunity. I want you to get this vaccine as well.
  It ignores cancer survivors who are very, very careful about what 
goes into their system. It ignores people with religious objections, 
and there are millions who have religious objections. It ignores 
individuals who just don't want to do it because they are an American 
and they don't have to and they do not like to have a Federal 
Government instructing them what they are going to actually put in 
their body.
  Now, ironically, this was a random selection of companies that have 
100 employees and up, so I assume that if you have 99 employees, you 
are all fine, but if you have 100 employees, it is totally different. 
There seems to be no accounting for where your employees work. Are your 
employees all tightly packed, all 100 in one small room, or are your 
employees all working outside? Do you have 100 employees, but they are 
in 19 different locations?
  There seems to be no accommodation for any of those. It is just the 
President saying: I have lost patience. You need to go get the vaccine 
immediately.
  So, by Thanksgiving, he is planning on laying this vaccine mandate 
down on the country. There are multiple problems there, as I have 
already outlined: the 40 million people who have already survived COVID 
and don't want to do the vaccine, the individuals in different medical 
treatments, the individuals with different other religious issues that 
they have.
  But it is also an issue of trying to have a mandate come down from 
the Federal Government with an Executive order. That is not how our 
system works. The President of the United States does not have the 
ability to be able to just demand behavior from the American people. 
That is not their role.
  It has been interesting to me. I have had several people who have 
reached out to me and said: I found out that the President's order 
exempts Congress. So how come you get an exemption and I don't?
  I quickly responded back to them: Because we are a coequal branch of 
government, and the President is trying to find everybody under his 
purview to be able to do this. But the judicial branch and the 
legislative branch aren't under his purview. Neither should be the 
American people because the American people do not work for the 
President of the United States. And companies of 100 people or more, 
their chief executive, their leadership does not work for the President 
of the United States.
  So now what? There are lawsuits that are pending, but those lawsuits 
can't move forward until the actual paperwork comes out from the White 
House. When the actual paperwork comes out in the next couple of weeks, 
we assume--we have not been told--then they will have what is called 
standing in the courts, and litigation from across the country will be 
able to speak into and Federal judges across the country will be able 
to move on an injunction on this out-of-control mandate and to be able 
to say they cannot just compel people to be able to go take a shot 
because the President wants them to get it.
  So that will be the first big step. There will be legislative 
challenges that will come through this body. They are slower, so the 
Federal courts are the fastest response to this. But there will be 
multiple other groups that will push back on this, myself included.
  Listen, why would we not respect those individuals who have already 
had COVID-19? According to an article that is in the Wall Street 
Journal just today, there was a study out of Israel that shows that the 
immunity from natural immunity is 27 times more effective than the 
shot--27 times, according to the study that has just recently come out.
  To ignore that and to say that is not enough is absurd--or to compel 
Americans, whether they have had COVID or not, to be able to have a 
behavior just because the President has ``lost patience'' is not who we 
are as Americans. It is not constitutional. It will not stand in the 
courts and should not stand. We should push back on this.

                          ____________________