[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 188 (Tuesday, October 26, 2021)]
[House]
[Pages H5923-H5927]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          VACCINATION MANDATE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2021, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Roy) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I appreciate my colleagues' tribute to Mr. 
Trumka. Whether or not we always agree with every issue, it is always 
great to see a life that is being honored here on the floor of the 
House of Representatives. I appreciate that.
  I appreciate his sentiments about staff and the hard work the staff 
carries out each and every day here on the floor of the House of 
Representatives, as well as in each of our offices. I join my colleague 
in each of those things.
  Madam Speaker, I would note that in the context of supporting 
workers, supporting the people across this country who are indeed 
engaging right now in many respects in saying no and striking and 
deciding that they are not

[[Page H5924]]

going to participate, I would say a lot of that has to do, 
unfortunately, with the mandates that have been pressed on workers by 
the efforts of the President of the United States, President Biden, and 
an illegal and unconstitutional requirement that employers vaccinate 
their workers, or those workers might be forced to lose their job.
  This has very real consequences. We have seen thousands of workers 
across this country protesting. Police members walking out. 
Firefighters walking out. Teachers walking out. People in industries 
and airlines and places across the country walking out. Nurses. Nurses, 
who were serving this country on the front lines during the pandemic 
last year when we didn't know all that was going on, and now they are 
being forced to decide to quit because of an unconscionable, illegal, 
unnecessary, unconstitutional mandate by the President of the United 
States. The government is forcing its citizens to make these tough 
choices.
  Madam Speaker, I have a dear friend who lives in Alabama, and she 
said to me: I had a long talk with a doctor, and he is not anti-vax by 
any stretch, he has had this vaccine. He is concerned. I am concerned. 
This is from my friend: I have been a decade-plus living with multiple 
sclerosis, and I am not in any way anxious to provoke an immune 
response by getting the vaccination.
  But now she is being forced to decide whether or not she can continue 
to teach. She just wants to teach. And now the university for which she 
works is saying she must get vaccinated or you are going to lose your 
job. Now, you say, well, just go seek an accommodation.
  Listen to what the geniuses at the university at which she works sent 
out as their accommodation. To be eligible for possible exception, you 
must first establish that your refusal to be vaccinated is based upon a 
sincere belief that it is religious in nature. A refusal to be 
vaccinated does not qualify for an exception if it is based upon 
personal preference, concerns about the possible effects of the 
vaccine--I want to pause for a second--concerns about the possible 
effects of the vaccine does not qualify for an exception.
  Yet, my friend, may now seek a religious exception because she has 
religious concerns about it. But she also has very real concerns as an 
MS survivor, someone dealing and living with MS. She is having to make 
a call about what is in her best interest. She is a mother of three 
children. Two of her children have had issues and reactions, arguably, 
attached to different vaccinations in the past.
  And never before in the history of the United States of America has 
the Federal Government gone out and issued an edict from Washington 
demanding that the American people get vaccinated. Think about that. 
Never before in our history. It hasn't happened. Yes, it can happen in 
our military, although we should be careful about it. Nobody should get 
dishonorably discharged. Nobody should get discharged.
  It has happened at places where the Federal Government has a direct 
impact on the employment of an individual. But all of these decisions 
have been left to local and State governments, local schools, local 
hospitals.
  But no, no, President Biden in his infinite wisdom, such as that may 
be, has suggested now by mandate that everybody get vaccinated and 
every business must vaccinate their employees.
  The fact of the matter is, we are now almost 600 days in to the 15 
days to slow the spread. The government lying to its citizens, 
continuing to move the goalpost of normalcy, moving it further away.
  Now the President wants a 97 percent vaccination rate, which he 
completely made up and pulled out of thin air, which is pretty much the 
entire definition of his entire incompetent, absurd Presidency.
  The government of this country derives its just powers from the 
governed. The government of this country derives its power from the 
consent of the governed. And, thankfully, brave Americans across this 
country are standing up every day and telling this President to pound 
sand. They happen to be using a different colloquialism.
  Southwest Airlines pilots spoke out and they just scrapped the plan 
to put unvaccinated employees out of work.
  In-N-Out Burger. ``We refuse to become the vaccination police for any 
government.'' God bless them. Go get an In-and-Out burger.
  General Electric employees of Greenville, South Carolina, walk out 
over a vaccination mandate.
  A New York hospital stopped delivering babies as workers quit over a 
vaccine mandate.
  Washington State employees quit, 1,900 of them fired over a vaccine 
mandate.
  A trooper tells Governor Inslee in Washington to kiss my--fill in the 
blank--in the final sign-off before a vaccine mandate.
  Seattle first responders.
  Parents in California protest student vaccine mandates.
  Vaccine opponents protest outside Stormont Vail following hospital's 
shot requirement.
  A Wyoming teenager was arrested after refusing to wear a mask on 
school grounds, family says.
  Well, God bless these individuals across this country who are telling 
this President to pound sand, and telling any Governor, or any member 
of the government in their State or local community exercising tyranny 
over their freedom as Americans to make the choices that they think are 
correct in their lives to pound sand.
  But why are we in this position, Madam Speaker?
  As I sit here, with rapt attention from all of the Members of 
Congress who are in here having a robust debate about the future of our 
country, as opposed to being out, say, having steak dinners with 
whoever the heck they are having dinners with in this town, and I ask: 
Why are we in this position? Why are we here?
  Last week we discovered with very clear terms that Dr. Fauci misled 
Americans during questioning from Rand Paul in two different Health 
Committee hearings.
  Dr. Fauci said on May 11, 2021: ``With all due respect, you are 
entirely and completely incorrect,'' speaking to Dr. Paul. ``The NIH 
has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the 
Wuhan Institute of Virology.''
  Later, ``However, I will repeat again, the NIH and NIAID 
categorically has not funded gain-of-function research to be conducted 
in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.''
  In a July 11, 2021 hearing, Fauci said: ``Senator Paul, I have never 
lied before the Congress, and I do not retract that statement. This 
paper''--that you are referring to--``was judged by qualified staff up 
and down the chain as not being gain-of-function.''

                              {time}  1800

  But what do we now know?
  We know that NIH did, in fact, fund gain of function research at the 
Wuhan lab. EcoHealth Alliance ``manipulated a coronavirus to generate 
up to 10,000 times the viral load, violating provisions of its National 
Institutes of Health contract that forbade unregulated research that 
could make a disease significantly more dangerous or transmissible.''
  That quote was in the rightwing conspiracy media paper Roll Call.
  My Republican colleagues on the Oversight and Reform Committee 
received a letter from NIH that confirmed that EcoHealth Alliance, 
which received money from NIAID, violated the terms of their NIH grant 
because they made the virus more deadly to humanized mice.
  In a September letter to me, Dr. Fauci said that because the research 
at Wuhan was not anticipated to be gain of function, it was approved.
  But why then did the Defense Advance Research Project Agency, known 
in this town as DARPA, reject similar research due to gain of function 
concerns?
  The NIH had a definition of gain of function on its web page which 
was available as recently as October 19, just a couple of days ago, it 
has now been changed entirely.
  Why would it be changed?
  Why would the NIH change their gain of function web pages this week?
  Could it be that Dr. Fauci was caught last week in his exchange by 
Dr. Rand Paul, my friend, the Senator?
  Now they don't even say gain-of-function research on the website. 
They took it off. It now says EPPP research. Now it says instead of--
the term gain-of-function research describes a type of research that 
modifies the biological

[[Page H5925]]

agent so that it confers a new or enhanced activity to that agent.
  It now says, on limited occasions, when justified by compelling 
public health need and conducted in very high biosecurity laboratories, 
NIH has supported certain research that may be reasonably anticipated 
to create transfer or use-- Come on.
  Madam Speaker, do you want to know why the American people don't 
believe their government?
  They shouldn't. They shouldn't, Madam Speaker. They shouldn't believe 
the lies that are coming out of our national health leaders that are 
endangering the American people as Dr. Fauci's lies have been doing for 
the better part of 18 months.
  Why trust an NIH that is by definition not being truthful?
  Even if Dr. Fauci wants to hide behind the technicalities of the 
definitions of gain of function, why couldn't he with an ounce of 
humility--and even an ounce of humility--go before the Senate committee 
and say: Do you know what, Senator Paul? I am troubled by how much 
funding has been going into these research efforts at the Wuhan 
Institute. Do you know what, Dr. Paul? I have got concerns because I 
didn't know for sure what EcoHealth Alliance was doing.
  But here is the problem with that. An NIH spokesperson told Vanity 
Fair that Dr. Fauci was ``entirely truthful'' in his statements to 
Congress.
  Oh, thank you, NIH spokesperson.
  And that he did not have the progress report that detailed the 
controversial research at the time he testified in July. Okay, pause.
  At this point I would at least expect the good Dr. Fauci to have the 
humility to say: Hey, this is troubling. I don't know that our research 
led to COVID-19, but I know that we have been funding now, I know now 
we have been funding research that is in the ZIP Code of gain of 
function.
  DARPA wouldn't even do it. The arrogance of this guy is that he is 
never going to admit that. He doesn't want to admit that he is wrong. 
He doesn't want to admit that NIH is neck-deep in this stuff because it 
is just straight up arrogance. That is why the American people have had 
it and they don't believe him. They don't believe NIH.
  But it goes on further. EcoHealth Alliance appeared to contradict 
that claim. It said in a statement: ``These data were reported as soon 
as we were made aware, in our year 4 report in April 2018.''
  Now, let me be clear, as a former Federal prosecutor, I don't know 
the facts. I don't know if EcoHealth presented that data in 2018. We 
will look into it. That is my job here. But I can promise you one 
thing, Madam Speaker, my Democratic colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle aren't going to look into it because they don't care because this 
has never been about health. This has never been about truth. This has 
always been about power.
  Well, rather than just focusing on the NIH, why don't we take a 
minute to focus on the CDC, another one of these august national health 
organizations to which we are supposed to bow down and say, please tell 
me what I must do for my own health and the well-being of my family?
  After facing backlash for saying the Federal Government was looking 
into a vaccine mandate, Centers for Disease Control Director Walensky 
took to Twitter to say that there would be no Federal vaccine mandate 
on July 30, 2021. I guess President Biden didn't get the memo? Oh. It 
is not a Federal vaccine mandate. I am just saying businesses or you 
are a contractor with the Federal Government, then you must do it if 
you have over 100 employees.
  Well, tell all that to my friends and the people around this country 
who are right now facing the decision of giving up their livelihood and 
not having a paycheck because they want to make the best decision for 
themselves or their families.
  My friend with MS who doesn't want to get a jab and wants to teach is 
being told she cannot because President Biden and the Federal 
Government is holding Federal contracts over the head of a State 
university which is too gutless and cowardly to tell the Federal 
Government to pound sand. That State--a southern State--should be 
absolutely ashamed of itself. That State should be telling the Federal 
Government to go straight to you know where.

  The CDC takes an absurd all-or-nothing approach to the vaccine. For 
example, if a teenager recovers from a COVID-19 infection and is immune 
and this teenager receives one vaccine causing hospitalization for 
myocarditis, the Centers for Disease Control suggests getting a second 
dose of the vaccine once the heart has recovered.
  Do you know what, Madam Speaker?
  The CDC director can go straight to hell. If that is my son or 
daughter, no way. No way.
  The CDC should be ashamed of itself for doing this, absolutely 
ashamed of itself. Go talk to the parents of those who have died. Go 
talk to the families of the moms who aren't here.
  I am not sitting here suggesting that I know in my infinite wisdom 
what is best for every American in terms of getting a shot. I don't 
know. I am not a doctor. But what I am is a Congressman, and a 
Representative who swore an oath to the Constitution of the United 
States that I would stand up to secure the blessings of liberty so that 
every American can make the decision for himself or herself as to 
whether or not they take any medicine.
  Again, never in the history of the United States have we had a 
Federal mandate from a President who doesn't, frankly, know east from 
west come down here and tell us that we have got to take a shot.
  The CDC refuses to talk about natural immunity.
  Why?
  Why will the CDC not talk about natural immunity?
  In fact, they point to an inconclusive study that prompted the 
director to say: ``If you have had COVID-19 before, please still get 
vaccinated.''
  There are at least 89 studies that affirm natural immunity is 
effective and long-lasting from a prior infection, yet our public 
health experts are uninterested. I have to go to studies in Israel. I 
have to go look at studies in the United Kingdom in order to get facts 
about natural immunity.
  Now, why would that be?
  Surely it is not because anybody is self-interested or financially 
interested in how much these pharmaceutical companies are making 
throwing vaccines at every American.
  A U.K. office for national statistics report published Monday found 
those who catch the delta variant are around 71 percent less likely to 
test positive again, 4 points higher than double vaccinated 
individuals.
  I am not saying you want to go catch the virus, Madam Speaker, but if 
you have had the virus, then you may not want to get the vaccine. And 
yet our scientists, scientists whom we now know to be less than 
truthful, refuse to acknowledge the benefits of natural immunity.
  What about the FDA?
  Can we trust the FDA?
  The FDA still has an image of a horse tagged with a web page saying: 
``Why you should not use ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID-19.''
  Doctors have been denied ivermectin and have not been able to get 
access to this treatment which has proven effective, at least to some, 
in treating COVID.
  Again, what happened to right-to-try?
  What happened to the ability to go to the doctor of your choice, 
Madam Speaker?
  Dr. Pierre Kory conducted an analysis of randomized controlled 
treatment trials of ivermectin used against COVID and found 
statistically significant reductions of mortality. Our FDA and CDC are 
preventing patients from receiving ivermectin. Now, I got a 
prescription for ivermectin. So did my wife. We each went to go get it 
filled. It is not horse medicine. I didn't roll down to Tractor Supply 
Company, which I go to often, to go get supplies for the land on which 
I live. And, yes, I have seen the ivermectin in the cabinet at Tractor 
Supply Company. No, this was a prescription for pills of ivermectin 
that we wanted to have on supply in case we thought we needed it.
  So we go down to get it filled at a pharmacy, CVS, and the first time 
my wife went down there they whispered in the back. They said, oh, we 
can't do that. We can't fill that prescription.
  Well, finally one person came in and overrode and said, look, do they 
have a prescription? Oh, yeah. Well, then, go ahead and fill it.

[[Page H5926]]

  So they filled the prescription. Then I go down to get the 
prescription filled that I got a few weeks later, and they wouldn't 
fill it. I went to another pharmacy, and they wouldn't fill it. 
Finally, I went to a third one, and we got it filled.
  Why is that? Why is that?
  The FDA has delayed the Merck COVID-19 pill likely until 2022. Now, 
some of my research has shown people out there questioning why we need 
the Merck pill, and maybe this is just another way to have another 
pharmaceutical company make a bunch of money on the back of COVID, but 
I also have a lot of smart doctors who are talking about the Merck pill 
as a potentially highly beneficial pill.
  Well, why can't we just all agree to right-to-try?
  We are in the middle of a pandemic where people are getting sick, and 
individuals can't go try this medicine because we are waiting on the 
FDA and all the geniuses to go through every possible scenario despite 
very positive returns on the initial tests?
  Remdesivir was so effective in its phase 3 randomized control trial 
that researchers stopped accepting new participants, no COVID patient 
who received the drug died compared with eight deaths in the placebo 
group. When a drug shows to work this well, it is considered unethical 
to continue to give sick subjects a placebo. The government has even 
prepurchased 1.7 million treatment courses. The medication doesn't even 
require refrigeration and it's easy to ship. Yet practicing physicians 
right now with patients who might die can't give this drug to any sick 
patient because of regulatory barriers.
  So we have mandates that you do stuff that may not even help in the 
slightest bit, Madam Speaker, and may, in fact, hurt you--mandates--and 
we have regulatory barriers preventing you from being able to figure 
out how to go take care of yourself or your loved ones.

  Again, I am not saying whether I think that drug is particularly 
efficacious or not. I don't know. I am not a doctor. But what I am is 
someone who can read. What I am is someone who believes in freedom. And 
what I am is someone who believes, Madam Speaker, that you should be 
able to go to the doctor of your choice and make a decision for you and 
your family with the best information available and a right-to-try.
  What about HHS as a whole?
  Can we trust HHS?
  After watching all the debacle that has been NIH, Dr. Fauci, and 
gain-of-function research; after watching what we have seen with the 
CDC and refusal to look at natural immunity; after looking at what we 
have seen with respect to the FDA and slow-walking drugs and access and 
hiding and obfuscating those drugs which may be beneficial to people; 
how about the HHS now limiting the State of Texas' ability to receive 
monoclonal antibody treatments?
  I was on a conference call with HHS leadership saying, why are you 
cutting our supply in half?
  Monoclonal antibody treatments are working.
  I said, tell me what--tell me, give me the amount that is currently 
in inventory, give me the amount that can be produced on a weekly or a 
daily basis by the companies that can manufacture it, and then tell me 
what you believe the demand is and why you are standing in the way of 
the orders that we are putting in in Texas to try to take care of our 
folks or Florida or any other State?
  They wouldn't and couldn't answer the question because it wasn't 
about the math. I pressed them. I asked a second question. I got back 
in queue on the whatever, Zoom call--or I think it was an audio 
conference call--I got back in and asked again, and they wouldn't 
answer because it wasn't about the math. It wasn't about the numbers. 
It was about going after Texas and Florida and saying, you are not 
going to get monoclonal antibody treatments.

                              {time}  1815

  The week of September 13, 2021, Texas received 23,640 doses. This 
week, Texas is receiving 11,400 doses, more than a 51 percent decrease.
  There is no reason for the Federal Government to be standing in the 
way of a State being able to work with their doctors to meet demand to 
save lives. The only reason is the power play of people who are 
absolutely so arrogantly full of their own views of the world that they 
want to press them upon the American people, as does Dr. Fauci, as does 
CDC Director Walensky, as does the leadership at the FDA, HHS, 
generally.
  These are the health experts, by the way, who also endorsed mass 
house arrest of Americans by locking down, the lockdowns. Remember 15 
days to slow the spread? What a joke.
  The lockdowns deteriorated people's mental health and inflicted more 
damage on women and girls.
  Among adolescents aged 12 to 17, the average number of visits to an 
emergency room for suspected suicide attempts was 22 percent higher 
during 2020 and 39 percent higher during the winter of 2021 than the 
corresponding period the year before. During last winter, emergency 
department visits for suspected suicide attempts were 50 percent 
higher.
  Reporting also shows more than 400,000 fewer child welfare concerns 
were reported.
  According to CDC data, overdose deaths killed a record number of 
Americans in 2020, almost 100,000 in 2020.
  Don't get me started on the border. Don't get me started on fentanyl. 
Don't get me started on the incompetence of an administration that 
would allow people to get abused in the name of open borders, saying 
that it is somehow compassionate while little girls get sold into the 
sex trafficking trade and fentanyl pours into our communities and into 
the lives of our loved ones and our young people who are dying by the 
thousands.
  Don't get me started about the empowered cartels. Don't get me 
started about the ranches getting overrun, the people getting abused, 
the dead bodies of migrants in south Texas.
  It is all the same thing, and it is all the same power play by a 
Federal Government led by a President who wants to give lip service to 
doing something to help this country while playing woke politics and 
allowing the American people to get abused and harmed in the process.
  Just as we have seen unfold in Loudoun County when a little girl, a 
ninth-grader, gets raped in a bathroom, and the father, upset, goes to 
the school board meeting and in the school board meeting dares to speak 
up and then is dragged down, bloodied, arrested because he was there to 
defend his little girl who got raped by a boy wearing a skirt in the 
bathroom of the high school he sent her to to get educated.
  Then that school board, sweeping this all aside in the name of 
wokeness and political correctness, what do they do? They ignore it, 
and then he becomes the poster child for so-called domestic terrorism.
  Then what happens? Another little girl gets abused by the same boy at 
a different high school in that district in Loudoun County, Virginia. 
Leftist wokeism running our schools with Virginia Democrats allowing it 
to happen because that is what is happening every single day in the 
Commonwealth of Virginia in Loudoun County.
  This is the state of our country at the moment, bowing down to the 
altar of woke politics; of the power hungry, the elite who think they 
know what is best for you, the same people who walk in and say: Parents 
don't have a role in the classroom. Parents don't have a role in the 
schools. Parents don't have a say in what is going to be decided in the 
school boards.
  Nothing could be more un-American. Nothing could be undermining the 
future of this country more than to separate parents from the education 
of their children.
  Nothing could do more damage to our country than undermining faith in 
institutions because so-called medical professional experts are telling 
lies, distorting the truth; refusing to be humble, to come forward and 
say they don't know the answer; to be honest about what taxpayer 
dollars are going to fund, what kind of research in China; having the 
slightest bit of humility to say maybe we don't know all the answers, 
maybe we should allow parents, doctors, families to make decisions that 
are in the best interests of their children, the best interests of 
themselves.

[[Page H5927]]

  Madam Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has 2 minutes remaining.
  Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, we have to make a decision about what we are 
going to do to carry this country forward. We have to decide whether or 
not we are going to give people information that they can believe in 
and trust and make sure that the institutions that are running this 
country, that are providing information for this country, can be relied 
upon.
  The American people are waking up. The American people are waking up 
to the lies and the distortions that have been shoved into their faces 
by the media, by the schools, and by the very people who are supposed 
to be running our national healthcare institutions and providing 
information that you can rely upon.
  The American people are waking up, and they are taking back their 
country. And the response shouldn't be, as it was from the Attorney 
General of the United States, to send the FBI in to go after parents in 
school boards. The response shouldn't be to sweep aside the concerns of 
a mom who wants to teach and has MS and doesn't want to get a vaccine 
and then has to choose and might get fired.
  That should not be the response of a competent and respectful 
government. That should not be the response of a government that is 
limited in power and is supposed to derive its power from the consent 
of the governed.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to refrain from 
engaging in personalities toward the President.

                          ____________________