[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 170 (Wednesday, September 29, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6783-S6786]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. SCOTT of Florida (for himself, Ms. Lummis, Mr. Johnson, 
        Mr. Lee, and Mr. Marshall):
  S. 2895. A bill to prohibit the Department of Transportation and 
other agencies from promulgating rules requiring a person to provide 
proof of COVID-19 vaccination in order to engage in interstate commerce 
or travel, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Commerce, 
Science, and Transportation.
  Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Mr. President, the past 18 months have been 
trying for our Nation.
  Thankfully, the vaccine has brought normalcy back to the lives of 
many Americans. In record time, thanks to the hard work of the Trump 
administration and scientists across our country, we developed a safe 
and effective vaccine to protect Americans against COVID-19.
  These vaccines show us what can happen through cooperation, 
ingenuity, and hard work. And I am grateful for all those who helped us 
get here. I got the vaccine and encourage everyone to talk to their 
doctor and consider doing the same. That is what we all should do: give 
Americans all the information and data so that they have everything 
they need to make a good decision for their family.
  That is exactly what I did when I was Governor of Florida in the face 
of life-threatening hurricanes. I made sure Florida families were well 
informed. I went out and made sure everyone knew exactly what to expect 
and how dangerous the storm could be, but I didn't issue mandates 
because that is not what governments should do.
  When I was Governor of Florida, we had the Zika healthcare crisis, 
which impacted newborns. Rather than placing mandates on pregnant women 
or restricting their travel to areas with local transmission of Zika, 
we simply informed Floridians, worked to be as transparent as possible, 
and offered free Zika testing to all pregnant women in Florida.
  Unfortunately, the Biden administration has gone in the complete 
opposite direction. The White House has tried to use the new OSHA 
guidance to create fear; push another round of trillions of dollars in 
reckless, wasteful spending; lock down our Nation; close our schools; 
and kill the economy that so many Americans have worked so hard to 
preserve and protect.
  Americans are sick and tired of the government telling them what to 
do, and the American people are more than capable of making the right 
choices to protect themselves, their families, and their neighbors.
  As families and businesses in Florida and across the U.S. continue to 
work hard to recover from COVID-19's devastation, travel is critical to 
getting our economy fully reopened. America's truckers, shippers, 
pilots, and deliverymen and -women play an important role in delivering 
the goods needed to keep our economy going. Everything from gas and 
groceries to packages from small businesses and department stores, they 
help keep this country running. They also haven't had the luxury of 
working from home. For 18 months, they have shown up to work. They have 
figured out how to be safe without the feds telling them what to do.
  But the job-killing Biden White House is now considering requiring 
those engaged in interstate commerce or interstate travel be vaccinated 
and provide proof of vaccination and a vaccine passport.
  The Federal Government has no business imposing vaccine mandates on 
the American people and our hard-working businesses. This proposal 
reeks of a power grab and is another attempt by the Biden White House 
to control

[[Page S6784]]

Americans. The Biden administration wants to control Americans through 
fear and mandates so the Federal Government is touching every single 
part of your life.
  I won't stand for it. Americans won't stand for it. They know that 
such an order is an overreach of power. Americans should be free to 
make choices they feel are in the best interests of their own health 
and the health of their loved ones, and the Federal Government has no 
business requiring travelers to turn over their personal medical 
information in order to make a delivery or to catch a flight.
  I believe Floridians and Americans across this country know what 
decisions are best for them. They don't need the Biden administration 
controlling their lives.
  The Supreme Court has already ruled that the Federal Government can't 
force people to purchase health insurance under the Commerce Clause. 
Why would President Biden think he could do so with a vaccine mandate?
  In December, President Biden promised--promised--he would not require 
Americans to be vaccinated or require that they carry vaccine 
passports--promise by President Biden. The new OSHA order breaks that 
promise. It has been one lie after another with this President.
  Today, I am introducing legislation which will prevent 
unconstitutional vaccine mandates for interstate commerce. I am 
thankful for Senators Johnson, Lummis, Marshall, and Lee cosponsoring 
this legislation and for Congressman   Dan Crenshaw, who is introducing 
the companion bill in the House of Representatives.
  We are working to make sure that families across our country can 
travel freely and businesses can conduct interstate commerce without 
the ridiculous government bureaucracy created by vaccine passports.
  This bill would prohibit the Department of Transportation, the 
Department of Commerce, and other Federal Agencies from requiring proof 
of vaccination or the use of a vaccine passport to engage in interstate 
commerce or travel.
  It protects people like my dad, who used to drive a truck and would 
carry goods across State lines. It protects the rights of American 
citizens, as laid out in our Constitution.
  President Biden is trying to upend our way of life and impose his 
view of health on every American--and I am here to say that I won't 
stand for it.
  Now, I would like to yield to my friends Senator Johnson and Senator 
Lee, as they will talk about this same bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
  Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I rise in support of Senator Scott's 
bill. I want to make a few different points. First of all, I don't 
believe this administration or people who support the mandates are 
really thinking the process through as to how devastating these 
mandates are going to be on our economy.
  Well before the President even announced his unlawful regulatory 
initiative, I was hearing from truckdrivers; I was hearing from nurses 
and doctors who have already had COVID, who had natural immunity, who 
are looking at, for example, the reports, are looking at some of the 
data and science saying that natural immunity is 13 to 27 times more 
effective than the vaccine, and they have chosen not to get it.
  President Biden promised the American public he wouldn't mandate 
this. He said: ``I don't think it should be mandatory. I wouldn't 
demand it to be mandatory.''
  His Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, said it is not the Federal 
Government's role.
  I agree. The President also said: ``This is not about freedom or 
personal choice.''
  No, this is exactly about freedom and personal choice.
  I have written so many oversight letters to the healthcare Agencies. 
I completely agree with Senator Scott. I was a big supporter of 
Operation Warp Speed. I have gotten every vaccine until this one 
because I have had COVID, but the Federal Agencies have not been 
transparent. They have not given the American public information that 
we need to make that informed choice.
  We need to recognize people's health autonomy. This is their body. 
They should be able to make these choices.
  I want to talk a little bit about some of the information we are not 
getting from our healthcare Agencies that people who are choosing not 
to get vaccinated are looking at. And it is not disinformation. This is 
real information. It is just being withheld from the public by our 
healthcare Agencies, by the media, and the social media.
  The first thing I want to show is a chart that I put together. Again, 
this is real data. This comes from the CDC in terms of the number of 
new cases per day, as well as the number of deaths per day. The deaths 
are down here in a very thin red line. But you can see by this chart 
that in terms of the surge of the initial Alpha variant of COVID, it 
pretty well peaked late December, early January.
  The vaccines got the emergency use authorization about mid-December. 
The orange line shows the percent of Americans vaccinated, fully 
vaccinated. You can see the initial surge, the initial pandemic, was 
winding down before the vaccines even could take effect.
  Now, again, we all hoped and prayed that the vaccine would be 100 
percent effective and 100 percent safe. But when you look at this 
chart, as the pandemic is winding down, the percent of fully vaccinated 
individuals are going up, you would think--again, you would think what 
you would see is just a complete winding down of the pandemic. But that 
is not what we have seen.
  We have seen this new surge, this new surge of a variant called 
Delta. So what are we to make of this? Again, I am not a doctor; I am 
not a medical researcher--but I look at this, and I am going, well, it 
certainly doesn't look like the vaccine has been particularly effective 
against the Delta variant.
  But let's look at some data, the type of data that we are not getting 
from our healthcare Agencies. So we have to look, unfortunately, to 
England and to Israel that are more transparent. I don't expect anybody 
to be able to read the figures here. I will give you the highlights, 
but I am showing that this is from Public Health England. This is one 
of their Federal healthcare Agencies. This is from their technical 
briefing No. 23, dated September 17, 2021. It covers cases for about 
7\1/2\ months, from the beginning of February to February 12. What the 
data shows is that during that 7\1/2\-month period in England, there 
are about 750,000 new COVID cases. A little under 600,000 of those were 
the Delta variant, about 80 percent. The number of deaths associated 
with those 600,000 Delta cases was 2,542, which gives us a case 
fatality ratio of about 0.4.
  Now, again, case fatality is higher than infection fatality because 
these are actually registered cases, and there are all kinds of 
infections that never get registered. So to put this in context, an 
infection fatality rate for a bad flu season is slightly under 0.2, 
half of this. Again, put things in perspective.
  Now, President Biden--and this has been parroted by media, news 
media--said that what we are currently experiencing is a pandemic of 
the unvaccinated. They don't give us, really, any data to back that up; 
they just proclaim, pronounce, that 99 percent of people with COVID now 
are unvaccinated, but they don't give us the data.
  We have data from England. And here is the data. So of the 600,000 
cases in England, 43 percent were with the unvaxxed; 27 percent were 
with the fully vaxxed; another 30 percent were partially vaxxed or just 
undetermined. But I think what is interesting--here is another quote 
from President Biden--President Biden said: If you are vaccinated, you 
are not going to be hospitalized; you are not going to an ICU unit; you 
are not going to die; you are not going to get COVID if you have these 
vaccinations.
  Well, maybe that is true in the United States. I kind of doubt it 
because in England, of the 600,000 new cases of Delta, of the over 
2,500 deaths--63 percent of those deaths--1,613 people were fully 
vaccinated. Twenty-eight percent were with the unvaxxed.
  This is information the American people probably never heard. It is 
information, by conveying it, I will get attacked. I will be vilified. 
I will be

[[Page S6785]]

censored. I will be suppressed. It is one of the reasons I come to the 
floor of the Senate to reveal this information that the American people 
need to know.
  Let me close with something else that certainly nurses know, nurses 
who were our heroes. They had the courage and compassion to treat COVID 
patients. Many got infected; some tragically died; most survived. Now, 
many of those nurses are treating the vaccine injured.
  Let me just quick quote a couple of figures from the CDC's own safety 
early surveillance system--the VAERS report, the Vaccine Adverse Event 
Reporting System. Worldwide, from a couple of weeks ago--these numbers 
are pretty fresh--there have been over 15,000 deaths reported on VAERS. 
Now, I realize VAERS does not prove causation. But of those 15,000 
deaths, over 5,000 of those deaths have occurred on days 0, 1, or 2 
following vaccination.
  Now, again, it doesn't prove causation, but if I were working at the 
CDC, I would be looking at that very closely and analyzing those cases. 
The final number, total adverse events, on the VAERS system in 10 
months, since the COVID vaccines have been under emergency use 
authorization, over 725,000 adverse events. So, again, I was hoping and 
praying this vaccine was 100 percent effective, 100 percent safe, but 
that does not appear to be the case.
  And I believe this administration, I believe our healthcare Agencies 
need to be honest and transparent with the public. They have not been. 
The American people have the right to choose. It should not be 
mandated. We should respect their personal choice. We should respect 
their freedom.
  And I will just close on--I will be bringing more information as we 
discuss other ways to push back on these mandates over the next few 
days, so stay tuned.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, during this pandemic, the people of the 
United States have seen the Federal Government intrude into their lives 
more frequently and more completely than ever before. President Biden 
didn't make any pretense about this. He didn't mince any words. He 
didn't sugarcoat it. He didn't even try to hide behind any veneer when 
he spoke to the American people. He said: ``Our patience is wearing 
thin.''
  This five-word expose of the President's thinking is deeply 
troubling. It is not the kind of sentiment you ever want expressed 
within a Free Republic, not from the Chief Executive.
  To say ``our patience is wearing thin'' might be something that you 
say of a foreign adversary. It might be something you say of a 
subordinate within government, someone who reports up to the President. 
It is not something you say of the people--the people who, in our 
system, collectively, are the sovereign.
  It is only by the consent of the governed that our government has its 
legitimacy, and to denigrate the American people that way is not 
consistent with who we are. It is not consistent with our form of 
government.
  So I find that five-worded mission of how he views the American 
people worrying in its own right. But I find it nothing short of 
horrifying that he--as if acting as some sort of omnipresent nanny 
state disciplinarian executive is now set to plunge even more deeply 
into everyday lives of the American people.
  We are here today to remove one of the options from the 
unconstitutional buffet of strong-armed Executive tactics used by 
President Biden in connection with COVID-19. Requiring proof of 
vaccination for interstate travel would create millions of second-class 
Americans. And it would make all Americans subject to a form of 
government and a type of power to which we are not accustomed. And that 
is really ill-suited for our Constitution structure.
  The Constitution itself protects Americans from this type of action. 
The Privileges and Immunities Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment 
grants Americans the right to freely travel between the States. There 
is no precedent for the Federal Government requiring anything like 
vaccination before traveling domestically. There is no precedent 
because there is no legitimate Federal power in this area to begin 
with.
  It is important to remember that the Federal Government doesn't have 
what we call general police powers. These are the basic powers of 
government that are there to protect life, liberty, and property and to 
focus on things like health, safety, and welfare.
  You see, State governments retain this general police power. Remember 
that James Madison, in Federalist No. 45, described the powers given to 
Congress as few and defined and those reserved to the States as 
numerous and indefinite.
  The Founding Fathers understood what general police powers were. They 
deliberately, consciously, intentionally, and with very good reason did 
not give those powers to the Federal Government.
  So as a result, the Federal Government doesn't possess, under the 
Constitution, the ability to pass laws or regulations of this sort. No, 
in our system of government--our national government--this Federal 
Government has to pass only those laws that are within these powers 
that are few and defined, those enumerated in the Constitution.
  The President of the United States, under our Constitution, does not, 
moreover, have any kind of unilateral lawmaking authority whatsoever. 
So the power is not Federal in the first place. And even if it were a 
proper Federal power, which it is not, it is a legislative power that 
he is trying to wield here. Only we can give him that. Only we can 
enact legislation.
  Article I, section 7, makes it very clear that if you are going to 
change the legal status quo, if you are going to establish policy at 
the Federal level that will carry the force of generally applicable 
Federal law, you have to be acting within one of Congress's enumerated 
powers.
  But more importantly here, under article I, section 7, you have to 
have passage in the House; you have to have passage in the Senate of 
the same legislative vehicle, followed by presentment to the President 
of the United States. That formula hasn't been followed here. We have 
no Federal law on this as a result of that. We, thankfully, got rid of 
a King back in 1776. We have never gone back--never looked back and 
longed for the Union Jack. We shouldn't be anxious to convert the 
Presidency into a type of monarchy, even if it is a mini monarchy.

  Beyond the constitutional problems, requiring vaccine passports for 
domestic travel within the United States would place a huge burden on 
not only the American people, but also on airlines and on other 
businesses that are already hard hit by the pandemic. Multiple major 
airlines have already expressed their concerns with a vaccine passport 
mandate.
  Look, the last thing the American people need is more mandates and 
restrictions preventing them from making their own reasonable 
decisions. Americans deserve to be able to make a living and to be able 
to engage in interstate commerce and to travel interstate without 
mandates making them choose between providing for their families and 
undergoing a medical procedure against their will.
  That is why I am fighting President Biden's existing mandate and 
fighting against future intrusions by the executive branch into the 
lives of Americans.
  The bill offered by my friend and colleague, the Senator from 
Florida, would ensure that Federal Agencies cannot attempt to impose 
vaccine requirements for interstate travel or commerce. I am proud to 
be here in support of this bill. I am proud to defend Americans and 
their constitutional rights. I hope we can protect millions of our 
fellow citizens and the American way of life by passing this bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Mr. President, under no circumstances should 
the Federal Government attempt to mandate these vaccines and require 
proof of vaccination in order to conduct business.
  Small business owners who are trying to restart their businesses, 
families trying to take vacations, and truckers who are getting back to 
work shouldn't have to choose between living their

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lives and meeting President Biden's demands.

                          ____________________