[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 170 (Wednesday, September 29, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6760-S6763]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                Abortion

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, this morning, the Senate Judiciary 
Committee had a hearing to discuss two of our Democratic colleagues' 
biggest headaches: the Supreme Court of the United States and State 
laws that protect the right to life.
  This wasn't the first time we have seen an attack on both waged by 
Members of the Senate. Last year, the majority leader, Senator Schumer, 
walked across the street to the Supreme Court and threatened two 
Supreme Court Justices by name based on an abortion case that they were 
considering.
  Sadly, it seems that our Democratic colleagues have simply given up 
when it comes to protecting innocent life. In 2020, February 2020, the 
Senate voted on a bill that would outlaw elective abortions after 20 
weeks, when science tells us that a fetus can actually feel pain. Had 
this bill become law, it would have put U.S. domestic policy in line 
with that of most of the rest of the world.
  Unfortunately, we happen to be in a small category, including North 
Korea and communist China, when it comes to the ability to get an 
abortion well into the period of gestation, including up to late-term 
abortions. As it stands today, the United States is currently one of 
only seven countries to allow elective abortions after 20 weeks. As I 
said, those seven countries include the Communist Party China and North 
Korea. But our Democratic colleagues filibustered that bill too.
  Then came one more opportunity to protect the most vulnerable among 
us. The Senate voted on legislation requiring doctors to provide 
lifesaving care to infants who survive abortions, just like any other 
newborn child would receive. That sounds like common sense, right? 
Well, if you ask the American people, they say yes. More than three-
quarters of the American people, when it comes to polling, said they 
support providing medical treatment for babies who survive abortions. 
But there are no Federal laws requiring healthcare providers to care 
for these children just as they would any other infant in their care. 
And, yes, you guessed it--Democrats blocked that bill too.
  The attack on innocent life has been years in the making, but we have 
never seen anything quite like the latest endeavor that has come from 
the House of Representatives. The so-called Women's Health Protection 
Act is actually ``Nancy Pelosi's Abortion Protection Act.''
  This isn't just about messaging. The Senate version of the bill is 
cosponsored by all but two of our Democratic colleagues. Clearly, the 
provisions included in this bill don't represent the beliefs of just 
some small subset of the Democratic Party. Apparently, it is mainstream 
within the Democratic Party.
  But it is clear that this is a no-holds-barred attack on the right to 
life. One of the most outrageous and unprecedented aspects of the bill 
is it limits State laws limiting abortion even after viability. This 
goes far beyond where the Supreme Court went in Roe v. Wade. It also 
undermines another landmark abortion case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. 
In Casey, the Supreme Court abandoned the trimester framework of Roe, 
replacing it with a viability standard to determine a State law's 
constitutionality. Even the author of Roe v. Wade and of Casey agreed 
that this viability standard was largely arbitrary. But this decision 
came in 1992, when a baby was considered viable after 23 or 24 weeks. 
But the marvels of modern medicine continue to challenge this estimate. 
Last June, a baby was born at 21 weeks and 2 days, and this past 
summer, he celebrated his first birthday.
  The extreme legislation attacking the right to life coming out of the 
House and now embraced by Senate Democrats would undercut the Supreme 
Court's ruling in Casey v. Planned Parenthood and would invalidate 
State laws that limit abortions after 20 weeks, which is now the 
consensus period of viability.
  A number of States have passed laws to restrict access for different 
gestational periods--for example, in Massachusetts and Nevada, for 
example, abortions are restricted after 24 weeks. In California, 
Washington, and Illinois--they are among the many States that restrict 
abortions after viability. But the Democratic proposal is so extreme, 
it would invalidate the laws passed in each of these blue States.
  If this proposal, the Pelosi abortion bill, became law, it would 
allow healthcare providers to perform abortions at any point so long as 
it is done to preserve the mother's health. This actually undermines 
the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that said it is 
constitutional to limit so-called partial birth abortions as a barbaric 
practice that does not have constitutional protection.
  But the provision that would allow abortion at any point in the 
pregnancy so long as it is done to preserve the mother's health--that 
doesn't mean the pregnancy actually threatens the life of the mother. 
Let's be clear on that point. If a single healthcare provider 
determines that the birth of the baby would impact on the mother's 
mental health, an abortion would be legal at any point in the pregnancy 
up to birth.
  This is way out of step with where most Americans are. A poll this 
last summer found that 65 percent of Americans believe that abortion 
should be illegal during the second trimester, the second 3-month 
period of pregnancy. An abortion opposition, I should say, to a third-
trimester abortion is even stronger. These are the so-called late-term 
abortions where the fetus is fully formed and even viable outside of 
the mother's womb. Eighty percent of Americans oppose third-trimester 
abortions but not Pelosi's abortion act, embraced by all but two of the 
Democrats here in the U.S. Senate.
  The American people clearly do not want abortion laws that put us in 
the same league as China and North Korea--two of the world's most 
aggressive human rights abusers. Until 2016, China had a strict one-
child policy. Families who didn't comply with that policy could be 
fined, lose their jobs, and the baby would even be the subject of a 
forced abortion. And it became common in China, as a result of this 
limitation on pregnancy, for families to prefer a son and undergo 
gender-selection abortions. If you are pregnant with a female child, 
well, abortion is fair game because they preferred to use abortion as a 
means to select the gender of their child.
  Democrats' legislation doesn't simply remain silent on gender-
selective abortions; it goes so far as to prohibit States from 
outlawing abortion as a method of gender selection. Not only that, it 
undermines State efforts to protect unborn babies with disabilities or 
Down syndrome. Unborn children being killed solely on gender or 
disabilities is a devastating problem in other countries. We cannot 
allow such a grotesque practice to become mainstream here in the United 
States. We are better than that.
  The list of atrocities included in this legislation is a long one. It 
requires healthcare providers who hold deep religious objections to 
abortion to violate their own deeply held religious beliefs and kill 
unborn babies. It invalidates informed consent laws, which require 
healthcare providers to share accurate information with their patient 
about the baby and whether specifically the child can feel pain. It 
gives the Attorney General of the United States sweeping authority to 
block State laws that try to protect innocent human life. So this 
radical proposal from the House, now embraced by all but two of our 
Senate Democrats, would overturn existing State laws and allow 
abortions on a scale our country has never seen before.
  I think it is a sad commentary on the conscience of America when all 
but a handful of our Democratic colleagues are fighting to implement 
these radical policies. But we cannot and we will not stay silent at a 
time when our most vulnerable are being attacked in such a manner. We 
have a moral imperative to defend those who cannot defend themselves, 
born or unborn, to protect those who cannot protect themselves. Babies 
with heartbeats, fingerprints, taste buds--they deserve to have 
protection of the law too. The Declaration

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of Independence, after all, says that we hold these truths to be self-
evident, that all are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable 
rights, including the right to life. I have always been proud to defend 
that right, and at no time in my lifetime has it ever needed more 
defense than right now in the face of these outrageous proposals.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, earlier today, as we just heard from my 
colleague from Texas, the Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the 
abortion ban that took effect in the State of Texas earlier this month. 
I hope every American who tuned in to this hearing listened very 
closely--very closely--because here is what we heard:
  My Republican colleagues on the committee literally made no effort to 
defend the Texas abortion law, the Texas abortion ban--SB 8, as it is 
known in Texas--not a single effort to defend it on its merits. They 
made no effort to engage on the issue of the shadow docket process 
through which the Supreme Court allowed this bill to become law, and 
they made no effort to argue that women's constitutional rights should 
be protected.
  What we witnessed during today's hearing was the opening salvo on the 
fate and future of Roe v. Wade. Here are the facts:
  This Texas law is no ordinary piece of legislation. To quote Supreme 
Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, it is ``a flagrantly unconstitutional 
law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional 
rights and evade judicial scrutiny.''
  This law has effectively banned abortion after 6 weeks in the 
Nation's second largest State, even in cases of rape and incest. The 
fact is, many women do not even know they are pregnant by 6 weeks.
  The architects behind SB 8 took an extreme proposal that clearly 
violated Supreme Court precedent and paired it with a new, disturbing 
private bounty hunter enforcement scheme, and they did so in the hope 
that the courts would not block the law because it wasn't clear who 
should be sued.
  At midnight on September 1, the Supreme Court allowed SB 8 to go into 
effect. As a result, millions of Texas women have had their 
constitutional rights challenged and suspended.
  This attack on women has already caused irreparable harm to countless 
women who lost their right to reproductive care in Texas.
  At today's hearing, we heard from Donna Howard, a State 
representative from Texas. In her written testimony, she shared the 
story of a woman who was denied the healthcare she was entitled to 
under the Federal Constitution. The woman went in to an appointment on 
August 31 of this year, and at the time, there was no heartbeat 
detected on the State-mandated sonogram. But when she came back the 
next day to have the procedure done, a cardiac motion was detected.
  Representative Howard said of this woman that at only 5 weeks--5 
weeks of pregnancy--she was too late to receive an abortion under the 
provisions of this new law. She was devastated. She already had a child 
at home and knew that bringing another child into their lives 
threatened her family's situation and their financial security.
  As Representative Howard went on to note, having an abortion was 
``the right decision for this mother's life and her family's well-
being.''
  But the Texas law went into effect, and the Supreme Court deprived 
this woman of her constitutional right.
  SB 8 marks a turning point in the decades-long campaign to undermine 
the Supreme Court's holding in Roe v. Wade. For years, legislative 
efforts to ban previability abortion have been stopped by courts. Until 
now.
  The legal architects behind this Texas law crafted a scheme to avoid 
judicial review. They lifted the responsibility of enforcement from the 
State and put it in the hands of private citizens. Listen to this: As a 
result of this Texas law, they have turned ordinary citizens into 
bounty hunters.
  I want to clarify something. I have read it and asked the Texas State 
representative to verify. It has been said that you can sue a person 
who aids and abets an abortion in Texas and recover $10,000 costs and 
attorney's fees. That is not what the law said. The law says you can 
recover not less than $10,000 in costs and attorney's fees. The first 
lawsuits have been filed already against doctors in these clinics, and 
they are seeking damages in the amount of $100,000 or more.
  You don't even have to live in Texas to receive this bounty. Consider 
Dr. Alan Braid, the first person to be sued under this new Texas law. 
Earlier this month, Dr. Braid, a practicing OB-GYN in San Antonio, 
penned an op-ed in the Washington Post explaining why he is continuing 
to provide abortions despite the law.
  As someone who has worked in medicine since 1972, the year before Roe 
v. Wade, Dr. Braid remembers a time when women could not safely access 
abortion care. He believes he has a ``duty of care'' to his patients, 
and he refuses to ``sit back and watch us return to 1972,'' in the 
doctor's own words. Well, as I mentioned, he is already facing the 
legal consequences of this new Texas law.
  Who is exactly the bounty hunter who filed the first lawsuit against 
him? You might guess it is a fellow Texan, right? You are wrong. It is 
a disbarred lawyer who lives in Arkansas, a bounty hunter; $100,000 is 
what he thinks this law is going to give him.
  That lawsuit being filed against Dr. Braid illustrates how irregular 
this Texas law's bounty hunter enforcement model really is. Anyone from 
any State can file a lawsuit against any physician. But when we include 
the categories of people who aid and abet the person receiving the 
abortion, the categories go wide afield, from the people who gave her 
advice, the folks who gave the transportation to the clinic, the 
minister who counseled her--all of these things makes them eligible to 
be sued for a minimum of $10,000 now in Texas.
  There is a reason why the Texas legislators designed the law this 
way. They sensed an opportunity on the Supreme Court. They knew an 
emergency legal challenge to this Texas law had a good chance of coming 
all the way to the Supreme Court. And they knew the Supreme Court has 
shown a willingness to allow sweeping changes to the law to take place 
on a short timetable without detailed explanation.
  It was interesting to listen to the Republican Senators go into orbit 
over the fact that we would raise questions about the shadow docket. It 
is a motions docket where the Justices on the Supreme Court can decide 
an issue on a very short timeframe without even explaining their 
position.
  That is exactly what happened with SB 8. When the law came before the 
Supreme Court, a majority of Supreme Court Justices, late at night, 
allowed it to take effect.
  The next day, the Court issued a one-paragraph opinion to explain it. 
It said they would not stay Texas's abortion ban because of the law's 
``complex and novel'' procedural questions. In other words, the Texas 
legislators got their way. By designing SB 8 with a new bounty hunter 
enforcement model, Texas lawmakers managed to evade judicial review.
  In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor explained how this scheme worked. 
She said, ``The Court has rewarded the State's effort to delay federal 
review of a plainly unconstitutional statute, enacted in disregard of 
the Court's precedents, through procedural entanglements of the State's 
own creation.''
  The Court's ruling on SB 8 is distressing for a number of reasons. 
For one, it has galvanized lawmakers across the country to undermine 
constitutional rights in their States. Over the past month, lawmakers 
and candidates in Arkansas, Florida, South Dakota, and other States 
have pledged to follow suit and copycat the Texas law. They saw what 
happened when this bill came before the Supreme Court. The Supreme 
Court basically said it can go forward.
  Additionally, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court has now 
signaled that it is willing to use the shadow docket to allow even laws 
unconstitutional on their face to take effect, as long as it aligns 
with certain ideological norms.
  Another witness we heard from today was Professor Steve Vladeck, an 
expert in constitutional law who has written extensively about the 
Court's shifting use of the shadow docket.
  The shadow docket, of course, refers to situations where the Court 
issues

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decisions outside the traditional merits docket. Historically, shadow 
docket orders are used to help resolve routine or procedural questions 
frequently without public deliberation, full briefings, or even signed 
opinions.
  But as Professor Vladeck testified, there has been a notable uptick 
in the Supreme Court issuing shadow docket orders that are ``having a 
far broader substantive impact, for better or worse, compared to [the] 
emergency rulings in the past.'' And many of these shadow docket orders 
appear to be driven by ideology.
  Let me tell why I say that. Listen to these numbers. During the 4-
year Presidency of Donald Trump, the Supreme Court issued 28 grants of 
emergency relief on the shadow docket at the request of the Trump 
administration--28 grants of shadow docket relief out of 36 requests. 
Each of these orders advanced President Trump's political agenda, 
including one that allowed the resumption of Federal executions for the 
first time and in nearly two decades.
  Now, let's do a comparison. If there were 36 requests of the Supreme 
Court for shadow docket opinions and 28 of them were granted in the 4 
years of Donald Trump, how about previous Presidents? During the 16 
years of the George W. Bush and Obama Presidencies, from 2001 to 2017, 
the Supreme Court issued four--four--orders in 16 years. In this last 
4-year period of time, they granted 28 out of 36 with the Trump Justice 
Department.
  With its handling of Texas's abortion ban, as well as other shadow 
docket orders, the Supreme Court's conservative majority has indicated 
a willingness to change substantive law in sweeping ways without due 
deliberation and public reporting.
  In doing so, they are undermining confidence in the Court, and the 
conservative majority has opened the door for ideologically driven 
legal schemes to rewrite laws from the shadows, like SB 8. This is a 
five-alarm fire for due process, as well as our constitutional rights.
  And as I expressed during this today's hearing, I hope every Member 
of the Senate--Democrat or Republican--will join together to protect 
and preserve independent, transparent, and reasoned judicial decision 
making based on the rule of law.
  At a time when the public's confidence in our governmental 
institutions has been greatly eroded, we must restore it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Rosen). The Senator from Utah.


                   Unanimous Consent Request--S. 2840

  Mr. LEE. Madam President, I rise again today to express my objection 
to President Biden's sweeping vaccine mandate and to offer legislation 
that would protect Americans from this Federal intrusion.
  As I said yesterday, the Federal Government has no business mandating 
COVID-19 vaccination for all Americans. Unfortunately, at least some of 
my colleagues disagree. The President of the United States said, while 
announcing the mandate, ``This isn't about freedom or personal 
choice.''
  ``This isn't about freedom or personal choice.'' It stuns me to think 
that a sweeping Federal mandate could be about anything other than 
freedom or personal choice. It is like robbing a bank and then saying 
it is not about the money.
  Our Constitution was designed to protect the liberties of the people 
of the United States. But now, the government is being used by the 
Executive to force Americans to be vaccinated or to be terminated.
  Yesterday, I came to the floor to speak about those Americans with 
sincerely held beliefs, whether religious or otherwise. My bill 
yesterday would have simply required that any mandate of this sort 
contain an exemption for those individuals.
  Now, I don't believe that such an exception would be sufficient to 
resolve the constitutional and the policy problems with such a mandate. 
But there are millions of Americans who would be able to live according 
to their beliefs if, in fact, such an exemption were included by law, 
which it should be.
  Lamentably, my colleague the senior Senator from Washington objected. 
So I pledged to come back again today and tomorrow, for as long as it 
takes, to win the fight against this egregious mandate.
  Today, I am providing another opportunity for this body to protect 
Americans.
  This mandate poses a real threat to the well-being of millions. Those 
who choose not to be vaccinated are at risk of losing their jobs. My 
office has been in contact with 144 Utahns who are concerned about this 
very issue. I shared some of their stories yesterday.
  Despite what many on the other side of this debate would have you 
believe, these are, in fact, everyday Americans: people with 
preexisting medical conditions, like autoimmune disorders. These are 
people who are just wanting to provide for their families and not to be 
able to expect that. These are pregnant mothers who are concerned about 
the safety of their own health and that of their unborn children.
  Some of these people are the heroes of yesterday. They are first 
responders; they are medical professionals and essential workers who 
sacrificed to carry our Nation through the hardest days of this 
pandemic. And they are still heroes today. These Americans are not the 
enemy.
  President Biden and those who support this effort are grasping for 
solutions they believe can bolster their political position and shift 
blame on the status of the pandemic. Those paying the price are the 
people back home, including many of the people I just described.
  So today, I offer another proposal. This bill would provide those 
Americans harmed by this mandate with a means of recourse. Under this 
bill, those who lose employment or lose their livelihoods due to this 
mandate may sue the United States for relief. The bill would make these 
very Americans whole after the President of the United States made 
working impossible for them.
  This bill is only one of many that I have introduced to combat this 
unconstitutional, unwarranted, indefensible mandate. While I believe 
this mandate will eventually be invalidated in court--I am quite 
confident that it will--until that day comes, these bills can provide 
businesses and the American people with the certainty that they need to 
make their own decisions. We will be protecting their God-given and 
constitutionally protected right to make medical decisions for 
themselves.
  So, Madam President, I am here today and I will be back tomorrow and 
fighting against this mandate for as long as it takes.
  Madam President, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous 
consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further 
consideration of S. 2840, and that the Senate proceed to its immediate 
consideration. Further, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be 
considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to 
reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there an objection?
  Mr. DURBIN. Reserving the right to object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority whip.
  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, more than 680,000 Americans have died 
from COVID. The majority of these deaths occurred before we had viable, 
effective, and safe vaccines. Doctors were begging for these vaccines 
to save lives, and now we have three safe, effective, widely available 
vaccines in America. All three have been proven successful and safe.
  However, one in four adults in America still refuses to get the 
vaccine. According to the CDC, these unvaccinated individuals--listen 
to this--are 10 times more likely to be hospitalized from COVID, 10 
times more likely to die from COVID than those who got the shot. And as 
long as large numbers of Americans remain unvaccinated, this virus is 
going to continue to spread and raise the risk of mutation and more 
deadly variants.
  We have tried approaches to incentivize people. What more can we do? 
We created a lottery in Illinois and said: If you are vaccinated, you 
are automatically buying a lottery ticket; you don't even have to pay 
for it.
  The head of the Federal Bureau of Prisons union for employees, with 
only 50 percent of those working in Federal prisons vaccinated, said 
they were going to set up a popcorn machine at the prisons in the break 
room in the

[[Page S6763]]

hopes of getting people to be vaccinated--trying everything to get 
people to try the vaccine.
  We have tried every approach to incentivize them, but the vaccine 
numbers are not where they need to be. So, facing this reality, the 
President accepted responsibility to try harder. He has directed 
Federal Agencies and OSHA to mandate vaccination for Federal employees 
and certain private workers. These directives were issued under the 
OSHA Act and other established legal authorities; and, listen, they 
have been welcomed by the Business Roundtable and other employers who 
were waiting for a signal from the White House that we were serious, 
and they are supported by a majority of the American people.
  I recognize that some of my colleagues disagree with that action, and 
that has prompted this bill from my friend and fellow Senator from 
Utah. His bill, the Don't Jab Me Act, would create a private right of 
action for any ``aggrieved individual'' to sue the Federal Government 
``for injuries sustained as a result of a COVID-19 vaccination 
mandate.''
  I know that the Senator is careful in his words. I would ask him to 
look carefully at that word ``injuries.'' It is misleading.
  COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective. They were evaluated in tens 
of thousands of clinical trials. They meet the FDA's rigorous 
scientific standards for safety, effectiveness, and quality. They have 
undergone and will continue to undergo the most extensive, intensive 
safety monitoring in history.
  In an extremely rare case that an individual suffers an injury, a 
harm, from a COVID-19 vaccine, there is a system in place to provide 
compensation. Under the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program, a 
person can already seek to recover damages for physical injuries 
suffered because of COVID-19 vaccines.
  The Senator from Utah's bill appears to go beyond compensating 
individuals for physical injuries caused by the vaccine. It lets people 
sue the government for ``injuries sustained as the result of a COVID-19 
vaccine mandate.''
  Now, what kind of injuries might there be?
  Well, we surely don't know. The bill does not define the type of 
injuries that a person could sue for. The entire bill is two and a half 
pages of very vague language.
  What we do know is that the bill, if enacted, would authorize a flood 
of lawsuits by individuals claiming that a vaccine mandate injured them 
in some physical, maybe nonphysical way. We don't know.
  It is ironic. For more than a year, my Republican colleagues claimed 
the pandemic would create a tsunami of COVID lawsuits. Remember all of 
the times Senator McConnell went to the floor and said: Hang on tight. 
The trial lawyers are just going to be hell-bent now, filing lawsuits 
all across America. There will be a tsunami of lawsuits.
  Well, it never happened. Despite that fact, the Senator from Utah is 
apparently urging a new set of lawsuits to be filed.
  I am a former trial lawyer. I made a living at it. When people have 
been harmed, I support their day in court, but liabilities laws need to 
be carefully calibrated to promote the right behavior and incentives. 
This short, vague bill does not even try to strike a balance between 
health and safety. It is a shot across the bow to entities that are 
using vaccine mandates.
  Remember, courts have long rejected challenges to vaccine 
requirements imposed by public entities. And the Senator might take a 
look at his home State. In Senator Lee's home State of Utah, there are 
public actors, like Salt Lake Community College, the University of 
Utah, and Utah State University, that are using COVID vaccine mandates 
to promote health and safety.
  And I want to show the Senate this chart because it tells an amazing 
story.
  Remember the report about all the attorneys general who were going to 
file lawsuits, in keeping with the Senator's message, against Joe Biden 
for these mandates for these employees?
  Well, we took a look at their State.
  Twenty-four States threatened lawsuits against Joe Biden for the very 
reason stated by the Senator from Utah.
  How are they doing compared to all the other States, the 26 States 
that didn't file a lawsuit?
  Well, it turns out the infection rate for COVID-19 over the past 3 
months is more than twice in those States as it is in the States not 
filing these lawsuits. Since mid-June, the death rate is almost three 
times the rate of those States that didn't file the lawsuit, and the 
vaccination rates are significantly lower.
  So for those who have an idea about guiding the State to the right 
outcome, shouldn't public health and safety be important?
  I am sure we all understand the issue of liberty and how important it 
is to America, but there was a word before liberty that the Founding 
Fathers used: life. Life.
  These vaccine mandates are about saving lives in America, and it is 
for that reason that I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
  Mr. LEE. Madam President, I appreciate the insight provided by my 
friend and distinguished colleague, the senior Senator from Illinois 
and the assistant majority leader.
  I respectfully submit that this is about allowing people to obtain 
redress for, among other things, the awful Hobson's choice people are 
facing and are increasingly going to be facing as this mandate kicks 
in. It hasn't been issued yet. We still don't know what is in it. We 
still don't know his precise basis for the authority. We assume that he 
would have told us his precise basis for the authority if, in fact, it 
existed.
  I have scoured the U.S. Code looking for authority for the President 
of the United States to implement this unilaterally, and I have found 
none. So it is very significant, therefore, that when you are going to 
put this kind of a Hobson's choice in front of the people, you ought to 
be able to at least have the decency to tell them what your source of 
authority is. He still hasn't done it.
  If we assume that he is going to come up with one and that he is 
going to issue a mandate, that mandate is going to put a whole lot of 
people in a terrible position, forcing them to choose between getting a 
vaccine that, for whatever reason, they don't want and termination--
between submission and poverty. That is unfair.
  Now, look, I get the fact that a lot of us were and are enthusiastic 
and grateful for the vaccine. I have received the vaccine, as has every 
member of my family. I think the vaccine is a good thing. I also 
understand that there are people who feel differently. In some cases, 
there are people who have been advised by board-certified medical 
doctors not to get the vaccine based on the existence of one or more 
autoimmune diseases, past personal or family history, and their 
idiosyncratic reactions to other vaccines or to this vaccine. There are 
other people who might have religious or other sincerely held personal 
beliefs that might make this choice a really unfair one for the Federal 
Government to force upon them.
  So, yeah, I am glad we have got the vaccine. I think the vaccine is 
good. I think the vaccine is helping a lot of people. But to tell every 
American that he or she must get this under penalty of losing a job, 
and then for the President, after acknowledging that he doesn't have 
authority, to mandate this for every American turns America's 
employers--all those with more than 99 employees--into the COVID-19 
vaccine police for the entire country.
  It is unjustifiable, even at a policy level, before we get to the 
obvious constitutional defects and the lack of any semblance of any 
statutory authority. So I am disappointed that we can't pass this one 
today. I will be back again tomorrow. I will continue to come back for 
weeks to come because the American people deserve better than this. 
They deserve not to have people in Washington, DC, purporting to make 
very personal healthcare decisions for them and conditioning their own 
private-sector employment on compliance with the dictate of one man in 
Washington, DC.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator 
Peters and I be allowed to continue to complete our remarks before the 
rollcall vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.