[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 81 (Thursday, May 12, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2473-S2476]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                 Unanimous Consent Request--S. Res. 631

  Mr. PAUL. Madam President, I rise today out of a desire to protect 
the rights and the health of the young men and women who serve the 
Senate as pages.
  I think we could all agree that the Senate wouldn't function well 
without pages. The very first Senate page was a 9-year-old boy named 
Grafton Hanson. He was appointed by Daniel Webster in 1829. In those 
days, the pages' jobs were to refill the inkwells and clean out 
spittoons. Fortunately, things have improved a bit for the pages. The 
work isn't quite as messy anymore, but it is still a high-pressure job 
for a high school student.
  When I was here on the floor voting last week, I noticed that the 
pages were all wearing masks, but none of my colleagues were. I 
threatened to come to the floor to seek unanimous consent to end the 
mask mandate, and the next day, the mandate ended. Coincidence? 
Perhaps.
  The new policy states, though, that the mask-wearing will become 
optional for pages who test negative. But once again, we see the masks 
on the floor.
  I urge my colleagues to look around. The pages are still wearing 
masks. The COVID policy for the Senate pages requires the reinstitution 
of a mask mandate if they have supposedly been exposed.
  Apparently, there are rules for the pages of the Senate, but not for 
the President of the Senate, Kamala Harris. When Vice President Harris 
was deemed potentially exposed to COVID, she not only presided over the 
Senate's confirmation vote of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, but was 
also seen at the White House with the President, the First Lady, and 
the Justice without a mask. Rules for thee but not for me.
  Jen Psaki justified the Vice President's violation of the COVID 
guidelines by stating that it was an emotional day. I guess if you are 
feeling like it is an emotional day then you can do what you please, 
unless you are a page. The impressive thing about that absurd defense 
was that Psaki was able to say it with a straight--and maskless--face.
  But an unseasoned mask mandate is not all that is required of the 
pages. According to the guidelines: ``All pages are required to be 
fully vaccinated; if their initial vaccination series was completed at 
least five months ago, pages are required to obtain [a] booster 
[shot]'' to participate in the Page Program.
  From day one, our country's response to this pandemic has made the 
comfortable more comfortable, while the working class or kids or people 
with no power have to keep on working but have to obey rules that the 
adults don't have to themselves.
  Now in the halls of Congress we have created a privileged class that 
can choose whether to get vaccinated and an underclass that has to 
abide by dictate. It makes absolutely no sense to mandate COVID 
vaccinations for teenagers who are healthy. It makes even less sense to 
mandate a booster. There is no scientific evidence that boosters are 
valuable, and there is scientific evidence that boosters increase the 
risk of a heart inflammation for young adolescent males.
  A study published last month in the Journal of the American Medical 
Association Cardiology examined over 23 million people ages 12 and up 
across Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. It concluded that the risk 
of myocarditis, an inflation of the heart, ``was more pronounced'' 
after a second mRNA vaccine dose, ``and the risk was highest among 
males aged 16 to 24 years.''
  This is exactly why several European countries, including Germany, 
France, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, all restrict the use of 
mRNA vaccines for COVID--particularly for adolescents, particularly for 
adolescent males. The policy of our pages does not address this issue 
at all and blindly commands boosters.
  In fact, if you read the policy, you could imagine an endless stream 
of boosters. Every 5 months that you haven't had another vaccine you 
would be required to get a booster.

  Last fall, the director and deputy director at the FDA's Office of 
Vaccines Research and Review both resigned. Realize who these people 
are. They are on the vaccine committee. They are pro-vaccine. Both of 
them are actually pro-vaccine mandate. Yet, they resigned from the 
Government, as reported, ``citing White House pressure to approve third 
doses for all adults and writing damning op-ed's critical of the FDA's 
subsequent decision to do so.''
  It became a political decision. The committee voted against extending 
boosters to kids, and then it was overruled by politicians at the White 
House. These two researchers, long esteemed, who have been on this 
committee for years, resigned in protest.
  One of the op-eds that ran in the Washington Post was coauthored by 
Dr. Paul Offitt, a professor of pediatrics and director of the Vaccine 
Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
  Once again--not an opponent of vaccines; a proponent of vaccines, a 
guy who has been on the vaccine committee for decades.
  As a Member of the FDA's advisory committee, Dr. Offitt, though, did 
not support widespread boosting when the committee met to consider 
boosters for all adults in September and October. He and the two former 
FDA officials wrote: ``A healthy young person with two mRNA doses is 
extremely unlikely to be hospitalized with COVID, so the case for 
risking any side effects,'' the case for forcing them to take a third 
vaccine when their risk of COVID after two vaccines is nearly, if not 
virtually, zero, he says--or they said that the case for risking any 
side effects--such as myocarditis--diminishes substantially.

[[Page S2474]]

  What happens is myocarditis is a rare event for vaccines, more common 
with young adolescent males. But you have to compare the risk of 
getting myocarditis with the vaccine to the risk of the disease. Young 
people who have been vaccinated twice--even without vaccines, young 
people, the death rate under 15 is 1 in 2.32 million. With the vaccine 
it is probably zero. We have studies of millions of people. We can't 
find kids that are dying or going to the hospital with two vaccines. 
And yet the policy for pages in this body is a booster--a mandated 
booster. It is actually malpractice. It is malpractice to give a 
booster, a third vaccine, to an adolescent male and probably to an 
adolescent female. There is no evidence it helps them.
  Then the other argument goes like this: Oh, we don't want them to 
transmit it to people. Guess what? We have done a study on that, too. 
Vaccinated versus unvaccinated: 25 percent of the household will 
transmit it. It is the same for both groups. The vaccine protects you 
from hospitalization and death. It does not prevent transmission.
  So we are going to vaccinate these kids to take care of the old folks 
in the Senate. It is not true. And they have already been vaccinated 
twice. The third vaccine--there is no scientific evidence. There is, 
however, evidence that it is a danger to them. And to ignore that 
danger, to be supportive of force I think is without question the wrong 
way to go.
  In January, a piece in The Atlantic cited Dr. Offitt--once again, a 
vaccine supporter who has been part of the vaccine committee with the 
FDA for decades--as saying this:

       Getting boosted would not be worth the risk for the average 
     healthy 17-year-old boy.

  This is coming from an advocate of vaccines--not a denier, not 
someone who hasn't been vaccinated. His son has been vaccinated, I 
believe, twice. But he said he wouldn't do it for a 17-year-old. In 
fact, he advised his son publicly, who is in his early 20s, not to get 
the third dose.
  What if I am wrong? What if Dr. Offitt is wrong? I don't know. What 
if it is a controversy? Wouldn't we allow it, maybe, in a free society, 
up to free individuals consulting with their parents whether you want 
to get them? But, no. Everything is about force. Everything is about 
mandates. Do as I am told, even when the science doesn't support it--
even when the science is arguable. Do it or we will fire you. Do it or 
we will send you home. I think it is a terrible example and, coming 
from the Senate, an awful precedent.
  The Chicago Thinker is a paper for the University of Chicago, and the 
students there put it in a January 11 editorial. These are the kids who 
are being forced to do boosters as well:

       If being ``boosted'' becomes a prerequisite for 
     participation in normal life, the vaccine's diminishing 
     efficacy means the booster campaign will never end.

  See, we know this. This is the truth of the matter. While the vaccine 
does help you to prevent hospitalization and death, we know it has 
diminishing efficacy, meaning that it wears off, so you have to keep 
getting boosted and boosted and boosted. But shouldn't we at least 
study it? Shouldn't we be honest with these kids in that their death 
rate is virtually zero with nothing? If you vaccinate them, it is zero, 
and then we have just got to keep vaccinating them. Just do as you are 
told. Submit to the State. Do whatever people tell you despite the 
science; despite three scientists from the FDA's vaccine committee 
saying it is not warranted; despite people arguing that it is actually 
malpractice and puts these young people at risk to make them get a 
third vaccine.
  In December, Dr. Marty Makary, a professor at the Johns Hopkins 
School of Medicine, wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

       The U.S. government is pushing Covid-19 vaccine boosters 
     for 16- and 17-year-olds without supporting clinical data. A 
     large Israeli population study, published in the New England 
     Journal of Medicine earlier this month, found that the risk 
     of COVID death in people under 30 with two vaccine shots was 
     zero.

  The risk of death is zero, and we are forcing them to get a third 
shot for which we know, from large, million-person studies, there is a 
side effect of heart inflammation.
  Even World Health Organization Chief Scientist Dr. Soumya Swaminathan 
said in January that there is no evidence right now that suggests 
healthy children and adolescents need booster shots.
  So most of Europe has actually said don't take it because of the risk 
of myocarditis, and the head of the WHO says there is no health reason 
for which to do it. Yet the Senate thinks it is smart enough to mandate 
these kids. God forbid one of them dies. God forbid one of them gets 
myocarditis.
  Dr. Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist from Harvard Medical School, 
says that mandating people who have already had COVID to still get 
vaccinated ``makes zero sense from a scientific point of view, and it 
makes zero sense from a public health point of view.''
  Furthermore, we now know the CDC released that, under age 11, 75 
percent of the kids have already had it. So, in the age category of the 
pages and a little older than that, we are looking at a 70- to 75-
percent chance they have already had it; they have already been 
vaccinated; their chance of death is zero. Yet it is not enough. They 
must submit--submit to the man; submit to the woman; submit to the 
State.
  The science isn't there. It is all about submission.
  Then we have weak lapdogs who just say: Go ahead and force them. We 
don't care. It is not very likely they will die. It is only a few out 
of 100,000 we may lose.
  A study in The Lancet last September supported this view, stating:

       Current evidence does not . . . appear to show a need for 
     boosting in the general population.

  This is not just in kids. This is in The Lancet, saying there isn't 
evidence for boosting in the general population.
  What has been accepted by most people is that boosting for those at 
risk--those of age, those with obesity, those with, you know, other 
risk factors--is not an unreasonable thing. For most of the people our 
age and older, the vaccine, without question, is safer than the 
disease, but the disease is so rare, so uneventful, and the death rate 
so low in children that you need a near-perfect vaccine to say: Take 
the vaccine versus the disease.
  Even then, wouldn't you want to know if they had had it? Wouldn't we 
want the CDC to release, if you have had COVID or if you have had COVID 
and have been vaccinated, what your chances are of going to the 
hospital?
  They actually did look at this for a large population study, and they 
found that, if you were vaccinated versus unvaccinated, you were 20 
times less likely to go to the hospital. I still believe that to be 
true, and I think it is for the overall population. It is probably not 
measurable for kids because kids aren't largely affected by this.
  Do you know what they also measured? They measured unvaccinated 
versus the unvaccinated who have had COVID--and guess what. You were 55 
times less likely to go to the hospital. The disease is an incredibly 
potent source of immunity. If you have been vaccinated and had the 
disease, I think you would calculate that in.
  Do you just blindly submit and just take 100 vaccines and take it 
every 6 months or would you want to talk to your doctor and say: Well, 
I had COVID in January, and I have had two vaccines. I am relatively 
thin and relatively healthy. What do you think?

  Wouldn't there be a decision-making process?
  When we are talking to children--the young men and women at the ages 
of 15 and 16 years old, many of whom have had COVID already and have 
already had vaccines--wouldn't we want them to be part of the decision 
making?
  Wouldn't we say: What do your parents think?
  Wouldn't we ask for parental consent?
  This is insane what we are doing. We have taken off on a tangent 
where things that were once private decisions are now the realm of the 
State.
  In the study in The Lancet, they stated that the ``[c]urrent evidence 
does not . . . appear to show a need for boosting in the general 
population, in which efficacy against severe disease remains high,'' 
and ``currently available evidence''--this is also from The Lancet--
``does not show the need for widespread use of booster vaccination in 
populations that have received an effective primary regimen.''

[[Page S2475]]

  So here we have a not insubstantial journal, The Lancet. Now, you can 
disagree. You can disagree with the New England Journal of Medicine. 
You can disagree with The Lancet, but for goodness' sake, wouldn't you 
at least admit that it is an argument and that when there is an 
argument that has valid facts on both sides of it that maybe the 
individual ought to get to decide?
  The Lancet says:

       Currently available evidence does not show the need for 
     widespread booster vaccination in populations that have 
     received an effective primary vaccination regimen.

  There is absolutely no clinical data to support other than a bunch of 
bureaucrats who want to command you. There is no clinical data to say 
that 15- and 16-year-olds ought to get a booster--zero.
  When we consider the rules for pages, we ought to ask: Will these 
policies be expected to continue indefinitely? And, if so, to what end? 
based on what data? When will they change?
  We have got them in here wearing masks. The Vice President doesn't 
wear a mask when she is exposed. Look across all the pages of the news. 
Everybody has been exposed. I think we have had 8 to 10 Senators who 
have had COVID in the last couple of weeks. Do you think everybody who 
ran into them wore a mask for 2 weeks? No, nobody is doing it. Nobody 
is paying any attention to these people, but the pages are stuck under 
the thumb of these public health czars.
  When we consider the rules, we ought to ask: When will this end?
  When it comes to vaccines, though, they can benefit the vaccinated 
person, but it doesn't stop transmission. The best data we have comes 
from Denmark, where vaccines were not shown to have any impact on 
household viral transmission or the secondary attack rate. In other 
words, whether vaccinated or unvaccinated, they both transmitted the 
disease equally.
  It is no coincidence that the Scandinavian countries have moved on to 
a targeted testing and treatment regime. They are no longer just saying 
for everybody to submit and for everybody to do the same thing. They 
are targeting the disease and those who are at risk. They don't expect 
people to live in a state of constant fear under an endless public 
health emergency. Instead, public health officials issue 
recommendations about how those at risk can protect themselves. They 
give advice.
  There was a time in the history of our country when public health 
officials gave advice, not dictates or mandates. Realize the policy we 
are adhering to is the same policy that Dr. Fauci espouses, and you 
know what his response was.
  When the court struck down the mask mandate on planes, do you know 
what Dr. Fauci had the audacity to say? He said: How dare the courts 
involve themselves in public health. We are not smart enough. Nobody 
outside the realm of Dr. Fauci is smart enough, but how dare the courts 
or the Constitution adjudicate what is individual liberty, what is the 
responsibility of government, and whether the CDC has the power to have 
mask mandates--none of this.
  How dare they? That was his response.
  Some offered a different approach. Some offered a more targeted 
approach to this. It is what Dr. Scott Atlas called for when he was at 
the White House in the last administration, but his voice was 
deliberately drowned out by Dr. Fauci and others who attempted to 
govern by stick rather than carrot.
  Public health measures should be backed up with proof that the 
benefits outweigh the burdens. There is no evidence of that when it 
comes to vaccination mandates, especially for teenagers, who as a group 
are less vulnerable to this virus than any Senator. That is why I am 
asking unanimous consent that the Senate pass my resolution to end all 
COVID mandates for pages and respect their privacy, their rights, their 
medical freedom, and their health for the young men and women who serve 
in this Chamber.
  Madam President, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent 
the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 631, which is at the 
desk. I further ask that the resolution be agreed to and that the 
motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no 
intervening action or debate.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, in reserving the right to object, my 
colleague Senator Paul is well-intended in this recommendation, and I 
listened to it carefully, as I am sure others did.
  The Page Program, which has been in effect since 1829, has become a 
program of both opportunity and education and is a program that the 
Page Board, the Senate Page Board, has responsibility for.
  I would say, in looking at the immediate future, the pages who are 
here now, the pages who have agreed to be pages in the summer, and the 
pages, I think, who are in line to be pages in the fall--and their 
families--have all looked at these recommendations. They have all 
decided they are recommendations they would be able to meet. Maybe more 
importantly, they also have decided to make that family decision for 
their children to be here and be pages as high school juniors, perhaps, 
because of the standards that have been set that they are well aware 
of.
  I would hope that Senator Paul would continue to talk to the Page 
Board. I think the Page Board has a very important job to do. They 
accept an incredible responsibility of the relationships that they have 
decided to enter into between the pages, their families, and the Page 
Board in representing the Senate.
  That Board has some oversight from the Rules Committee, and I yield 
to the chairman of the Rules Committee.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I thank Senator Blunt for his 
statement.
  I join him in opposing this resolution.
  As chair of the Rules Committee, with oversight of the Sergeant at 
Arms who helps manage the Senate Page Program, I know, like Senator 
Blunt does and everyone here does--I see Senator Leahy is here, the 
Presiding Officer, and Senator Paul--how hard the dedicated pages, who 
come from States across the country, work to help us do our jobs here 
on the Senate floor. We are so excited when we have someone from our 
States come and join us as a page. They are, too, as are their 
families.
  As we continue to reopen the Capitol, which I strongly support, we 
must also take into account the health and safety of everyone who works 
and visits here, including our pages. This resolution would reverse the 
Page Program's--as Senator Blunt noted--current policy and prohibit any 
requirement for pages to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
  It would also prohibit requiring pages to undergo COVID testing or 
wear a mask regardless of guidance from the Office of the Attending 
Physician or the CDC. This includes reversing the policy that all pages 
must wear a mask if one tests positive--a commonplace rule to protect 
healthy pages, who all live in the same dormitory, which, I think, is 
the defining part of this.
  In light of recent events, we know that staff, Senators, as well as 
pages, have tested positive in the past few weeks. In light of these 
recent events, the Attending Physician, Dr. Monahan, has recommended 
that all pages wear masks. I believe in science. I believe we should 
listen to Dr. Monahan. Local public health officials have also decided, 
by the way, to require vaccines for certain eligible students in 
Washington, DC, including those attending our page school here in the 
Senate.
  I agree with Senator Blunt in that the Page Program needs flexibility 
to set its own policies to protect the health and safety of pages. We 
should not put these young people who have come here to work in the 
heart of our democracy at risk unnecessarily.
  We all know that the vaccine helps greatly if someone gets sick. I 
know that because my husband got really sick before there was a 
vaccine. He is healthy, and he ended up in the hospital for a week on 
oxygen. That might shape my response here, but I believe that if he had 
had the vaccine, we wouldn't have come that close to losing him.

  I believe in science. And so I join Senator Blunt in this objection. 
And we look forward to seeing these pages and many pages serve us well 
in the coming years; therefore, I object.

[[Page S2476]]

  Thank you.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.