[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 217 (Thursday, December 16, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9239-S9241]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                Vaccines

  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I am here on the Senate floor now for the 
21st time specifically to oppose President Biden's sweeping vaccine 
mandates.
  I have introduced over a dozen bills to one way or another limit, 
clarify, or counteract the mandates. Every time I have come to ask the 
Senate to pass what should, frankly, be uncontroversial matters, one of 
my colleagues or another from the other side of the aisle has come to 
object. This is unfortunate. It is unfortunate, really, for a number of 
reasons.
  These mandates, while currently being challenged in court in a number 
of jurisdictions, show the terrible power that even the threat of a 
vaccine mandate can wield. Businesses across the country are 
suspending, punishing, and firing employees who haven't had the COVID 
shot. The threat of the mandate is making it harder for everyday 
American families just to put food on the table and to do so, moreover, 
in increasingly difficult economic times.
  Now, these are not our enemies. These are not people to be feared. 
These are not people to shun or loathe entirely, as the mandates seem 
to suggest. No. No. These are our friends and our neighbors. These are 
mothers and fathers. These are people who, like far too many Americans, 
are just struggling to get by.
  I am going to continue to fight for them and to protect them because 
they understand something that President Biden has yet to accept even 
though, deep down, I know he does know it, and that is, this isn't 
right. It is not right for him to do. It is not right constitutionally 
for about a dozen reasons, but it is also just not right morally.
  It is a morally unacceptable proposition to suggest that someone 
should get fired just because they don't conform to Presidential 
medical orthodoxy. It is immoral to tell someone that their ability to 
put food on the table for their children depends on whether they get a 
shot--a shot that they may or may not want; a shot that may or may not 
conflict with their religious or sincerely held beliefs, that might be 
contraindicated by one or more conditions, resulting in their doctors 
advising them not to get the shot.
  This is not something that anyone should do. In fact, the American 
people agree. According to a recent Axios poll, only 14 percent of 
Americans--just 14 out of every 100 Americans--agree with the apparent 
position of the President of the United States that if someone doesn't 
get the shot, they should be fired. I would imagine it is even fewer 
than that. Fourteen out of a hundred isn't very many to begin with, but 
I am pretty sure it is even fewer than that--far fewer--who would say 
that it is OK for one person within the Federal Government to decide to 
fire everyone who doesn't comply within the government and also to tell 
private employers that they will receive crippling, company-destroying 
fines--that no company, not even the wealthiest out there, could live 
with--if they don't fire every one of their employees or otherwise take 
adverse action against them in their declining to take the shot. It is 
not OK.

  In this effort, I have, to be sure, been supremely clear. I am not in 
any way against the COVID-19 vaccinations--quite to the contrary. I 
have been vaccinated. I have encouraged people to seek out all the 
relevant information and be vaccinated. I believe that the COVID-19 
vaccines are keeping countless Americans safe from the harm threatened 
by the COVID-19 virus.
  This is different than that. As a matter of fact, there is an 
undercut, and it can't offset the fact that this mandate is pushing 
government control beyond the constitutional limits and into the 
private decisions of the American people.
  That is why I am against all of these mandates for all age groups, 
and that is why I have come to the Senate floor repeatedly to help and 
to call on my colleagues and President Biden himself to end this 
madness once and for all, to end it before it is too late, to end it 
before irreparable harm is inflicted on those who, for whatever reason, 
can't or are otherwise inclined not to comply with his directions.
  I have even offered a bill, one that should be unusually, uniquely 
uncontroversial, but even that one met objection. It was a simple 
reaffirmation of parental rights that our government has respected and 
honored and even protected from the beginning.
  My Parental Consent for Vaccination Act would simply require that any 
COVID-19 vaccine mandate issued by the Federal Government--to be clear, 
it shouldn't be issuing any at all, but any of them that it happens to 
issue must be a mandate that includes a requirement that informed 
parental consent be provided before the shot can be administered to a 
minor.

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  Now, this one is so far afield from the broader question of whether 
we should have these mandates at all. It is the slightly narrower 
question of whether the President of the United States should 
administer them. It really should not be controversial.
  Now, allow me to put this issue in some context here. Parental 
consent is required for all sorts of things. Parental consent, as every 
parent with school-aged children knows, is required for field trips. 
Parental consent is required for pretty much all extracurricular 
activities. For that matter, it is required for many in-class 
activities. Parental consent is required before most schools can 
administer so much as a Tylenol or a baby aspirin to a child. Everyone 
knows that. None of that is happening without parental consent.
  That is, to be sure, the right approach. It is as it should be. 
Despite what some candidates have said in some recent political 
campaigns, parents should be informed and involved in their children's 
education and certainly in their child's health decisions, in matters 
of medical treatment.
  Parents, it is important to remember, are simply better equipped to 
make these decisions. Parents know their children, and they know their 
children's medical histories. Parents know their moral, their 
religious, and their health requirements that are, in many cases, 
unique to their families. It is certainly something that no government 
and no school can keep track of in the same way that a government or a 
school does. Parents also love their children--that is important here--
and parents, because they love their children, have their children's 
best interests at heart when they make decisions affecting them.
  The government can't do any of those things. It certainly can't do 
any of those things anywhere close to as well as a parent could. The 
reason for that is fairly simple. It is because government doesn't have 
arms with which to embrace children. The government doesn't have a 
heart with which to love children. The government doesn't even have 
eyes to see or ears to hear because government, of course, when reduced 
to its essence, when we really define it as what it is, is simply 
force. It is legally authorized violence.
  Now, thank Heaven that God and the law have always assigned the 
primary care of their children to parents and not to government. 
Government is just the official actual or threatened use of force. We 
need government. It is also one of the many reasons we have to be 
careful with it just like other things that we rely on in so many 
ways--things like electricity, like moving water, like fire. They are 
all necessary to our day-to-day lives, and yet when left uncontrolled, 
they are dangerous and quickly become fatal when we don't exercise due 
caution.

  This has, of course, been acknowledged for millennia. It has been 
written about widely for many, many centuries, even centuries before 
the founding of our Republic. And it has been acknowledged since the 
very earliest days of our Republic.
  George Washington himself warned the people about this, warning that 
government is itself forced and is therefore dangerous and has to be 
carefully managed. That is why we have a Constitution. That is why we 
have all these rules about government.
  If men were angels, we wouldn't need government. If we had access to 
angels to run our government, as James Madison described it in 
Federalist 51, then we wouldn't have to bother about government abusing 
its power, and we wouldn't need all these rules.
  But we are not angels. Men and women are not angels. And we don't 
have access to angels to run our government, and so we have to have 
rules governing the use of government. And it is for our own safety.
  Nowhere is this more important than with respect to our children. 
That is where we can really see laid bare the essential, core facts of 
what government is, which is the actual or threatened use of coercive 
force.
  Now, I also thank heaven above that God didn't assign the anonymous 
masses on the internet to care for children. The pressure children 
receive through social media, through news publications, and common 
video sites lacks nuance and any specific understanding of a child's 
health condition or history or religious beliefs.
  There are even reports in prominent magazines of children being 
advised to commit fraud or cross State lines to be vaccinated 
specifically against their parents' advice, circumventing parental 
authority.
  There is a reason why the FDA requires the fine print and the 
sometimes very painfully exhaustive and descriptive side-effect 
warnings on pharmaceutical advertisements and why those ads always 
encourage viewers to consult their doctors. But in the brave new world 
of Big Brother healthcare, students aren't encouraged to consult their 
parents, let alone their doctors.
  Unfortunately, in some places, like here in our Nation's Capital, 
government has completely lost the plot. In the District of Columbia 
school system, for example, minors can receive medical procedures 
without the school even informing the parents. In other places across 
the Nation, this slippery slope is already leading governments to 
consider life-changing, school-provided medical procedures without 
parental notice and without parental consent.
  As a parent, this thought sends shivers down my spine. I know I am 
not alone in that respect--far from it. Most Americans, regardless of 
what part of the country they come from, regardless of creed, political 
affiliation, socioeconomic status, or any other single factor, if they 
are parents, they are going to feel the same way. They don't like the 
idea of someone else taking over the raising of their child. They don't 
like the idea of government taking over control of medical decisions on 
behalf of their child. You see, that is supplanting their role. That is 
moving them out of the way.
  School-aged kids are also some of those least at risk of contracting, 
spreading, and suffering long-term or serious effects from COVID. The 
data has shown this all along. The vaccines, on the other hand, may 
pose a more serious risk to some young people than they do the general 
population. Various countries, including France and Germany, have 
ceased recommending some COVID vaccines to those under the age of 30 
because of complications.
  Again, I am not against the vaccines, but the thought of schools, 
social media, or, heaven forbid, government pressuring students into 
vaccination without parental consent is rightfully troubling. It is 
downright chilling, and it should not happen--not here, not in the 
United States of America.
  While the Federal Government has almost no legitimate role in 
influencing local education decisions, we can make sure that the 
Federal Government does not endorse or, heaven forbid, mandate this 
dangerous approach to medical decisions for minors. That is not too 
much to ask. That is not something that should be controversial here in 
the U.S. Senate. That is not something that is remotely controversial 
among the good people of this country--left and right, rich and poor.
  If they are parents, they are deeply disturbed by the thought of the 
cold, impersonal force that is government pushing them out of the way 
to make these medical decisions for them and for their children.
  So let's provide assurance to parents and children. Let's reaffirm 
our commitment to supporting parents in making decisions for their 
children. Let's protect kids, and let's end these mandates.
  They are illegal. They are unconstitutional, and they are morally 
indefensible.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
allowed to speak for up to 20 minutes and Senator Menendez for up to 5 
minutes before the scheduled rollcall votes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (The remarks of Mr. Sullivan pertaining to the submission of S. Res. 
482 are printed in today's Record under ``Submitted Resolutions.'')
  Mr. SULLIVAN. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. RISCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 
2 minutes on the next three nominations.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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