WASHINGTON – At the weekly Republican leadership press conference Tuesday, U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (Mo.) underscored the harmful impact the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate will have on U.S. employers, adding to the labor force and supply chain challenges that are already roiling the economy. Blunt has been vaccinated and repeatedly encouraged those who are eligible to receive a vaccine to consider doing so, but has also made clear that it is not the role of the federal government to force that decision on Americans.
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Following Are Blunt’s Remarks:
“I think the thing that I’m hearing about most from home right now is vaccine mandate.
“Everybody in Missouri that’s heard me say anything about this issue since December of last year at every single event has heard me say, ‘I personally think you shouldhave the vaccine unless your doctor tells you you shouldn’t.’ You can be pro-vaccine and anti-mandate.
“And what I’m seeing happen and one of the reasons that I think the government can’t force people to do things that they don’t want to do on this front—you know, you’vegot to be careful in government that your reach doesn’t exceed your grasp, that you can’t pretend to do something that, at the end of the day, you really can’t do.
“I think the Biden administration probably is and definitely should be rethinking this. Now, so far, the courts are rethinking it for them. But if the courts somehow let them move forward with this, what they’re going to find out is that people who work at grocery stores that have more than 100 employees will lose a lot of those employees.
“There are grocery stores that have less than 100 employees, or there are other places you can work and make as much as you make at the grocery store. So grocery storeowners are saying, ‘we can barely keep the shelves stocked and the backroom running right now. What happens if those people leave?’
“Almost every rural hospital in Missouri that I’ve talked to points out that they may not even be able to get 100 percent of their health care professionals vaccinated. They certainly don’t think they can get 100 percent of the people who keep the hospital open, the floors mopped, the cafeteria running, the security system running.
“And, fortunately, the Medicare-Medicaid issue that was supposed to require them to have 100 percent vaccination by now, the courts have said, ‘you can’t go forward with that. But, if they had, most Missouri rural hospitals would have had to close because you can’t stay open without Medicare and Medicaid. And they weren’t going to let you stay open without 100 percent vaccinated people.
“So, whether it’s healthcare professionals, people in police forces and fire departments that have more than 100 people. There’s a police force right next door somewherethat has 20 people. You can go to work there because they almost for sure have vacancies as well.
“This is—I think it was C.S. Lewis said that the most insidious form of authoritarianism is when the government tells you you have to do something because it’s for your own good. If this is for people’s own good, this is something they can figure out for themselves.”