Motion to Discharge

Floor Speech

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Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I will be speaking in a moment. I had planned to deliver my remarks prior to making a unanimous consent request, but in deference to my friend and colleague from Washington, I will be making the consent request first, and then proceed to my prepared remarks. Unanimous Consent Request--S. 2847, and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. Further, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. =========================== NOTE ===========================

On page S7059, October 19, 2021, first column, the following appears: UNANIMOUS CONSENT REQUEST--S. 2988,

The online Record has been corrected to read: UNANIMOUS CONSENT REQUEST--S. 2847 Mr. President, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be discharged from further consideration of S. 2847, ========================= END NOTE =========================

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Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I have come here to the Senate floor six times now to oppose President Biden's unconstitutional actions, using the Federal Government and using the Oval Office, in particular, in order to force Americans to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

Now, as I have said before, as I have said each and every time I have spoken on this issue, I am not opposed to the COVID-19 vaccine. I have been fully vaccinated, as has every member of my family, with my encouragement. I encouraged my family, I have encouraged friends, everyone I know, to get vaccinated.

I think the vaccine is a blessing, and it is one that has helped a lot of people. And I think it is one for which society, as a whole, has benefited.

I have had and recovered from COVID-19 before I got vaccinated, and I can tell you that contracting COVID is not an experience that I would like to repeat, and it is not an experience that I want others to have. That is why I have had the vaccine and why I have encouraged others to do the same.

I, nonetheless, raise my hand in this very Chamber each time I have been sworn into the office. Pursuant to the Constitution, I stood right there on those steps and I swore an oath to uphold and protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

That inspired document limits the powers of government. It does so because government power is sacred. Government power is dangerous. Government power always involves the actual or threatened use of coercive force. It is what government is--the ability and the authority to use coercive force and to do so on an official basis through law. It is for that reason that the Constitution carefully contains the power of government and does so in a way that reflects its immense capacity for harm.

There are lots of other things that are useful that we have to be careful when handling. You know, fire, electricity, oxygen, water, these are all things that are necessary, that we depend upon, that we need; and things that, if left uncontrolled, can inflict all sorts of harm, can hurt people, can kill people, can destroy life and property.

So that is why the Constitution goes to great lengths to draw boundaries and assign authority not only to different branches of government, but also different levels of government. In fact, every single provision of the U.S. Constitution is itself a form of limitation on government power.

These protections were designed to prevent government from excessively burdening the American people, because we have seen over time the tendency of governments to abuse that power and, in particular, the tendency of governments to become abusive when there is a dangerous accumulation of power at the hands of a few.

Tragically, and under the direction of Senates and Houses of Representatives and White Houses of every conceivable partisan combination, we have strayed far from the design of our government--the design put in place by the Constitution, the very same Constitution to which we have all sworn an oath.

And as a result of that, Americans are now forced to work many months out of every year just to pay their Federal tax obligations only to be told after the fact, by the way, that is not nearly enough because we are now nearly $30 trillion in debt in closing.

The monetary printing presses are pumping out tsunamis of fiat currency that eats away at Americans' savings and earnings. Government regulations cost trillions of dollars a year as a hidden back door, invisible, and highly regressive tax on American productivity and on American development.

And this is a tax that is borne disproportionately by poor and middle-class Americans who find that everything they buy--goods and services alike--become more expensive. And we find that they also pay for it with diminished wages, unemployment, and underemployment.

Almost every aspect of American life is now inappropriately restricted, directed, or taxed by the Federal Government. President Biden's recent mandate adds yet another roadblock to millions of Americans just trying to get by, forcing them to choose between getting vaccinated on the one hand and having a job on the other hand.

What it is doing is it is saying: Look, you don't agree with the government position on this? Fine. You are going to lose your job. You are going to pay. You are going to lose your job. You are going to be rendered unemployed and effectively unemployable. Not only that, but we are going to do it in a way that many instances will render it basically impossible for you to recover unemployment benefits.

One of the things that is particularly devious about this one is that the mandate itself hasn't been issued, and yet it has been now a month and a half or so since President Biden gave the speech announcing his intention to create it.

Had he created it, we would at least know what we were dealing with. We would know the precise source of authority in the law that he was claiming. We would know the contours of how it would be enforced. We would know the contours of any exceptions to the mandate.

And because we would have an order, there would be something that people could challenge in court, where necessary. But as of right now, we have none of those things. We have only this Damoclean sword hanging over the American people, who are forced to guess.

And in the meantime, we have corporate America--we have employers with more than 99 workers, understandably, scrambling in an effort to get ahead of this thing because they know that the penalties for noncompliance with this are likely to be significant. So many of them are trying to get ahead of it so they are not caught flat-footed and unable to comply.

As a result, many of these have just tried to guess at what the mandate will say and adopted those policies, sometimes knowing that their policies might be more aggressive than what the Federal Government will require.

But in the meantime, this leaves no one accountable. The corporations have the Federal Government to blame. And the Federal Government responds by saying there is no policy yet; there is nothing to sue on yet; there is nothing for the Federal courts to enjoin as unlawful, as unconstitutional, as an improper exercise of Federal power generally-- keeping in mind that the Federal Government is one of few and defined powers, as James Madison described them in Federalist No. 45. The powers reserved for the States are numerous and indefinite. We flipped that on its head here. There is nothing that gives the Federal Government this power.

My friend and colleague from Washington moments ago made the argument that vaccines are nothing new and that vaccine requirements are nothing new. Well, you know, they are new when it comes to a general mandate issued by the Federal Government to do this. Yes, there have been mandates in the past, but insofar as they deal with the general population as opposed to military personnel or certain government workers. These are not Federal law issues. These have been State law issues. The Federal Government has no general police powers.

Even if there were power within the Federal Government to do this, which I assure you there is not, we know for certain that one person acting alone--even if that person is the President of the United States--has not the power to do this.

This is, I believe, perhaps the most egregious example of Presidential overreach, the most shameless executive branch power grab since President Harry Truman seized all steel mills in the United States in the 1950s in order to support the Korean war effort.

Now, President Truman did not get away with that. The Supreme Court appropriately struck that down as well outside Presidential powers. You see, nothing in the Constitution and nothing in Federal statute gave President Truman the power to seize steel mills simply because he deemed them an important part of the war effort.

Here, that hasn't happened. Here, that can't happen--at least not yet because we don't have an order. The President, after making this announcement about 6 weeks ago, hasn't had the decency to even tell us what the source of his authority is.

And I will let you in on a secret: He has none. He has not a single scintilla, not a shred of authority--not statutorily, not constitutionally--to do this. He does haven't the power to do it.

Now, lest you be deceived into thinking that this is an academic infringement of some esoteric liberty, it is not. Let's be honest about what we are doing here. We are telling hard-working American moms and dads: If you do not succumb, if you do not heel, if you don't obey the Presidential dictate at issue here, you are going to lose your job.

We are making them decide between getting a vaccine to which they may have a medical or a religious or some other legitimate exemption on the one hand and on the other hand becoming unemployed and unemployable. And in many instances, they are unable to even attain unemployment benefits because you know what a lot of these companies are doing--again, in order to get ahead of the mandate--they are adopting their own draconian and aggressive policies. They are already firing people. In some cases, they are not firing them. They are putting them on unpaid administrative leave, making it impossible for them to get unemployment. Is that really what we want to do?

Look, I understand the COVID-19 vaccine is a good thing. I consider it a medical miracle of sorts. What do you say to somebody whose religious beliefs make this an unacceptable choice for them? What do you say to someone with a genuinely serious medical condition, someone who has been told by his or her board-certified medical doctor, ``Don't get this vaccine. You, in your case, you shouldn't get it because of medical condition X, Y, or Z''? What do you say to that person? Do you really want to tell that person that them being brought to heel with the Federal directive issued by one person, in the absence of any statutory or constitutional authority to do that, that is more important; that is so compelling, that they have to be rendered unemployed, unemployable and ineligible, in many instances, even to collect unemployment? Is that really what we have sunk to? I hope not. I don't believe we have.

The American people know better. They know that is not how we resolve disputes in this country. It is certainly not how we treat religious minorities or people with medical conditions that make them have a different set of concerns than other people. That is not how we act.

By the way, it is also a good reason why we don't make law in this country through one person because, of course, Mr. President, a law like that would never pass. It would never pass here in the Senate or in the House of Representatives. It couldn't withstand that kind of scrutiny, not the way it has been laid out--not a chance.

Deep down, the President of the United States perhaps knows this. I can only assume--of course, I can't read another human being's subjective mindset--but I can only assume that he would have brought it to Congress and given us the opportunity to consider it and adopt it. He cut out the people's elected representatives, the people's elected lawmakers whose constitutional obligation and authority it is to make the law so we can only make assumptions from them.

But it is not as though he didn't have time to do it. Six weeks have elapsed since he made the announcement. Meanwhile, I am hearing from countless people across America, including 300 or so people from the State of Utah who are themselves being put in impossible positions.

Now, look, mind you, for most people, this isn't a big deal. Most people in America have chosen to get the vaccine, and I am glad they have, but there are a lot of people whose stories are heart-wrenching.

Just this week, I heard from a flight attendant who works with a major U.S. airline. She has religious beliefs that make her opposed to getting this vaccine or any vaccine. She is a hard-working employee. She has been a faithful flight attendant, and it is a job that she has loved and she has enjoyed throughout her entire adult professional career. It is a job that has benefited her and her family, allowed her to make a living, put food on the table. She is now being faced with this awful choice between, on the one hand, betraying her religious beliefs--which she is unwilling to do--and, on the other hand, losing a job which is her only means of earning a living, of feeding her family. How is this fair? How is this just? How is this constitutional? It is not.

Troublingly, there are now signs that the White House isn't satisfied with just making Americans who haven't received the vaccine unemployed and unemployable. The administration is reportedly also considering a medical mandate for interstate travel. Such a move would be deeply constitutionally concerning, but it would also revoke yet another freedom and make yet another group of American citizens solidly second class.

The privileges and immunities clause of the 14th Amendment, of course, protects the right to interstate travel. There is no precedent in our Nation's history of a requirement of this nature for interstate travel.

Even if those considerations were somehow untrue--they are not, but even if they were--Congress has certainly not granted such authority to the President of the United States to act unilaterally, nor would we ever.

A mandate requiring people to get the COVID-19 vaccine in order to have the privilege, the benefit, which is actually just a right, one that the American people ought to be able to rely on to travel interstate within the United States, is truly unthinkable.

But many of the Federal Government's actions over the last year have shown Americans the real threat it poses to freedom and simply to common sense. Remember, this is the administration that has forced our 2-year-olds to wear masks for hours at a time on airplanes, buses, trains, and in bus depots, train stations, and airports--2-year-olds. For any parent out there or for anyone who has ever actually interacted with a 2-year-old human, you can certainly understand how absurd this is, especially when our peer nations have recognized there is no need to mask a 2-year-old.

But back to the mandate for a minute. If we think through this disturbing possibility of forced medical treatment as a condition precedent for visiting family in another State or traveling for business reasons or traveling for any reason at all from one State to another, the impacts are clear, and they are devastating. Businesses already hard-hit by the pandemic--the travel and hospitality sectors-- would, of course, be further strained; collateral damage, I suppose, on the part of those who would push such an oppressive move.

Individuals could be marooned in States or they couldn't work, couldn't go to restaurants, and couldn't leave. And the social capital built from face-to-face interactions would be further set back.

I believe vaccines are generally safe, and they help protect people from the harms of contracting COVID-19. I have in the past and I still now continue to encourage people to get the vaccine, but we must ask what ends this administration is willing to go to to cudgel Americans to this state-sponsored health edict.

I am personally uncomfortable with such sweeping mandates, but, more importantly, I am required by my oath to protect the Constitution of the United States to oppose this action. That is why I brought forward my latest iteration of my efforts against this unlawful, unconstitutional, and still inchoate mandate. My Let Me Travel America Act would clarify the law and prohibit the Federal Government from mandating that Americans receive shots against COVID-19 as a prerequisite for interstate travel.

I am grateful that my colleagues, Senators Tuberville, Braun, and Sullivan, have joined me as cosponsors of this bill.

This is a commonsense, practical, reasonable bill, one that would simply provide assurance and protection to millions of Americans whose rights are under attack.

Moments ago, I came here, and I asked unanimous consent that we pass this bill today with the understanding that I am going to continue to come back day after day, as long as it takes, to address what the President is doing.

The Senate had a chance to protect the American people from yet another unconstitutional overreach. It is disappointing to me, really, that my friend and colleague, the Senator from Washington, chose to object to its adoption.

This shouldn't be controversial. It is really not controversial among the American people. I guarantee you, you take a poll asking people should the Federal Government ever be able to tell you that you can't travel interstate unless you receive a particular medical treatment, there is no way the American people would think that is a good idea because it is not, because it is absurd, and because it violates everything that we believe in.

Now, my friend and colleague, the distinguished Senator from Washington, made the point that such measures can't be enacted because, according to her, they supposedly undermine vaccine efforts. Do you know what undermines the vaccine effort? What undermines the vaccine effort is when you try to use the overpowering cudgel of coercive force, a type and a level of coercive force that no other entity on planet Earth can wield more strongly than the Federal Government--you use that cudgel to tell people who haven't gotten it yet: You must get this.

Look, a lot of people have been getting the vaccine. Yes, there are some holdouts, and they have their reasons for being holdouts. There are a lot of ways that you can convince someone to do something that they don't currently want to do. One of the things that is going to make it far less likely that they get the vaccine is for them to be told that they are being threatened with their jobs. It is not how you win. Even if it were that we could somehow chalk this up as a win here, that is not who we are; that is not how we play.

And this is unprecedented. Make no mistake, the Federal Government has never undertaken anything like this. States and political subdivisions of States--meaning cities, towns, counties, so forth-- States and their subdivisions have general police powers, meaning broad power to protect health, safety, and welfare; to protect life, liberty, and property in whatever manner they deem appropriate, subject, of course, to such limitations as may be placed on them either by their State Constitution or by the U.S. Constitution.

But States and their subdivisions have the ability to enact legislation like this--health, safety, welfare legislation--in a way that the Federal Government doesn't. We have to act pursuant to one of the enumerated powers in the Constitution.

I challenge anyone to identify what source of authority can fairly be said to give the Federal Government this kind of power. It doesn't exist. We have never exercised this power with respect to the U.S. population at large. It is a different thing entirely to point to vaccine requirements that we have had for certain Federal personnel, including our military servicemembers. We have never done anything like this. If we were to ever consider something like this at a Federal level, I would have grave concerns with it because I don't think it is the prerogative of the Federal Government.

But I can tell you one thing, I am darn certain we would never give one person the authority to impose such a mandate. No, that is not how our constitutional system works. There are a lot of reasons why we no longer fly the Union Jack. A lot of them had to do with what happens when you have a dangerous accumulation of power in the hands of a few. That is one of the reasons why we put in place a rigid set of requirements saying that before you change the legal status quo, before you pass a law, you have to run it through Congress. Any Federal law, assuming it is acting in an area within the Federal Government's power and authority and jurisdiction, it can't become law, Federal law, until you run it through the House, run the same language through the Senate. Then you present it to the President for an opportunity for veto, signature, or acquiescence. Without going through that process, you have not made a Federal law.

Look, Harry Truman's effort to seize the entire steel industry in the United States was unlawful. It was unconstitutional. And, mercifully, the courts were able to dispense of that in a relatively short period of time.

We don't even have the luxury of going to court in this instance because the President hasn't had the decency to show us his work, to tell us what he is actually doing.

Meanwhile, he is bullying corporate America to do his dirty work for him. Corporate America is dutifully complying in some cases, perhaps out of allegiance or a desire to appear compliant with the President's wishes; in other instances, just for more practical reasons. They don't want to be stuck with the heavy fines that may be levied against them if they are caught flat-footed and unprepared for what may be coming. So they are doing the President's dirty work for him. They are doing the firing, rendering people unemployed, unemployable, and in some cases ineligible even to receive unemployment.

Shame on him and shame on us if we don't call this out for what it is, which is an aggressive, unconstitutional, baseless power grab.

My friend and distinguished colleague, the Senator from Washington, also pointed to what she referred to as tailored exemptions to the vaccine mandate.

What exemptions?

There is no mandate. There are no exemptions. Yeah, he has spoken in aspirational terms about certain exemptions that would be available, but corporate America doesn't know what they are. And so corporate America, acting on the advice of counsel, is understandably being very aggressive, erring on the side of firing more people and rendering more people unemployed and unemployable, and in many cases rendering them incapable of receiving unemployment.

So, no. No. Don't tell me these are tailored exemptions, when there aren't even exemptions. In order for it to be an exemption, you have got to have a mandate. There is no mandate. There is just the threatened use of the mandate that is making corporate America decide that it is in its best interest to do the President's dirty work for him, and in a way that protects him from being questioned on legal, meritorious grounds in court.

And if we can't muster the legislative will to defend that power which is rightfully ours--not ours in the sense that we personally own it, but it has been given to the people, the power to make sure that laws are passed only by their elected Representatives and Senators--we can't stand up for this, shame on us.

And if we can't stand up for even a further encroachment on that power and on the corresponding right that the American people have long come to depend upon, to be able to travel interstate without undue hindrance or interference from their government, it is a sad outcome, one that I can't countenance. That is why I am going to be back day after day, as long as it takes. The American people expect more. The American people deserve better.

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