Cloture Motion

Floor Speech

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Mr. LEE. Madam President, in politics, on television, on social media, and pretty much everywhere, it seems that people are decrying the surge of ``misinformation.'' False information and dangerous ideas exist, but the cure to factions of falsehood and the kinds of harms coming from them was something that was prescribed in the very early days of our Republic.

James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 10 of the value that our large Union would always possess in defeating self-interested and dangerous ideas and philosophies and specifically factions. The answer is simple: Our free society, with free exchange of ideas, allows for a multiplicity of viewpoints, perspectives, and opinions to be heard, and then the true, correct, and useful ideas tend to rise to the top.

Madison wrote:

The increased variety of parties comprised within the Union, increase . . . security.

At this point, I would add that the definition of ``parties'' here is best understood to encompass information, ideas, and opinions--all things that tend to unify people around one faction or another, one party or another, one group of people or another.

But, oh, how many have lost their way since then. Be it through mandates, censorship, cancel culture, or something else, it seems that this dialogue of ideas and information is being rejected by many segments of our society. What a shame that is. It is an even greater shame that, often, this is the result of government action.

Yesterday, I came to the Senate floor with one of my dozen bills to try to counteract President Biden's vaccine mandate. This bill that I offered up yesterday required only that the Secretary of Health and Human Services provide the information the Department already has on adverse COVID-19 vaccine effects to the public. We have already got this information. We just wanted them to share it with the public, with the American taxpayer--those who have been footing the bill all along. Regrettably, the senior Senator from Washington objected to the bill and described it as a waste of time and one that would somehow undermine trust.

My response to that is simple: Why would we ever want the Federal Government to hide any health information from Americans? If we want to build confidence in these vaccines, and we do--I certainly do--then the Federal Government must get out of its own way and build trust and confidence with concerned Americans by sharing information.

Allow me to be abundantly clear. I am very much against the vaccine mandate, but I am for the vaccine. I have been vaccinated. I have encouraged others, including my family, to be vaccinated, and they have done so. I believe these vaccines are miracles. They are helping many millions of Americans to avoid the harms of COVID-19. But there are many Americans who are deeply concerned with the vaccine. They are not going to be people who are simply convinced by cruelty or by extortion.

I have heard from over 300 Utahns who are at risk of losing their livelihoods due to this damaging, senseless, and immoral mandate. These are not our enemies. They are mothers and fathers. They are neighbors. They are military servicemembers. They are our friends. They deserve more respect than being fired, brushed aside, and permanently relegated to unemployable, outcast status, which is the inevitable consequence of this mandate. This is where it naturally leads.

Now, many of these people would appreciate more information from the COVID research that their taxpayer dollars are already paying for. One would expect that the amount of research should be pretty darn extensive considering that as of May 31, 2021, just a few months ago, Congress had supplemented the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services with approximately $484 billion in COVID-19 funds. That is a lot of money. That is almost half a trillion dollars.

Keep in mind that a trillion dollars represents, last I checked, roughly $3,000 for every man, woman, and child in America--not every taxpayer; not every worker; but every man, woman, and child in America. This is roughly half a trillion, so we are talking somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,500 for every man, woman, and child in America.

This is their money. These are their funds. This is money that they worked really hard to produce. So it should be their information that they have access to. But, lamentably, as recent news has shown, the National Institutes of Health often feels the need to hide information about its activities from the public. So, today, I have come to the Senate floor for now the 10th time on the vaccine mandate with a solution that should be entirely noncontroversial.

My bill, the Transparency in COVID-19 Research Act, would simply require that the Secretary of Health and Human Services publish all the studies and findings that the Department has supported regarding COVID- 19. The bill provides for the privacy of researchers and study participants. The bill would better inform Americans about the COVID-19 vaccines. The American people deserve to have this information. After all, they have paid for it, and after all, they are now routinely being subjected to it whether they want it or not.

Again, this whole exercise should be about building trust and confidence in the COVID-19 vaccine. That is, after all, what we want. You are never going to get that through threat, intimidation, extortion. In any event, it is immoral action. That is not something we can justify. That is not the way to treat our friends, our neighbors, our servicemembers.

I am grateful to my colleagues, Senators Braun, Lummis, and Tuberville, who agree and have joined me as cosponsors of the bill.

Look, if we want the American people to be comfortable with the COVID-19 vaccines, we should be more than comfortable providing the research that led to their development and their approval. If we want Americans to trust their government, we should be clear that it does not hide important health and research information from them. If we want our Republic to function properly, just like James Madison hoped for, then we need to have an open dialogue with all the information. The bill would be a positive step toward each of these ends, and I encourage my colleagues to support it.

So, Madam President, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be discharged from further consideration of S. 2844 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.

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Mr. LEE. Madam President, it is disappointing that we weren't able to take this step today to restore trust and confidence with the American people in research that they have now spent half a trillion dollars conducting.

I understand the impulse to--as my friend and colleague, the distinguished Senator from Virginia, put it--to let scientists handle science. That doesn't mean, that shouldn't mean, that must never mean that we exclude the American people from the right to access the findings of their own government--a government that has used their own taxpayer dollars to the tune of half a trillion dollars just through HHS and through trillions more on other COVID-19-related efforts. We should be able to trust the American people to access that information, and when we hide it, it erodes trust and confidence in the very vaccine that President Biden is trying to force on all Americans, even at the pain of losing their jobs.

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