-9999
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, it is not often that you get the Business Roundtable, which is an organization representing some of the biggest private-sector companies in the world; the largest labor unions in the country; and the American public all on the same page on a policy. But that is what is happening with respect to the President's requirement that big employers in this country either test their employees regularly for COVID or they get vaccinated in order to stop the spread of this insidious disease.
This is a very popular proposal, and it is popular for a simple reason: People are exhausted with having their lives fundamentally changed, turned upside down by a pandemic that we have the power to stop.
We have the power to stop it because of researchers and scientists who discovered a vaccine that is wildly more effective than the vaccines that have been invented to attack other diseases--90 percent effective, if not more, against COVID. If everybody got vaccinated in this country, we could all take off our masks. If everybody was vaccinated in this country, we wouldn't have to be passing emergency relief bills to keep the economy afloat. If everybody got vaccinated, we could open back up all of our restaurants. That is what Americans want. That is why this policy is so popular.
And I understand what my friend from Oklahoma is saying, that they are not arguing over the efficacy of the vaccine, they are just arguing over the constitutional powers of the Presidency.
But come on. Come on. We understand the power of our words in this place. Republicans know that when they come down to the floor and attack the vaccine mandate day after day after day, they know they are giving fuel to the fire of the anti-vaccine campaign. They know that they have become an extension of those that are trying to convince Americans that the vaccine has a microchip in it, that the vaccine kills you.
It just strains credibility for my Republican colleagues to suggest that there is no connection between the anti-vaccination campaign in this country and those that are every single day on the floor of the Senate talking about how dangerous it is to require that people in this country get the vaccine. There is a connection, and the growing movement of people in this country who think that the vaccine is some conspiracy to hurt people--well, this movement to try to end the vaccine campaign by the President, it is wind underneath their wings.
But let's talk about what this policy really is because it is actually not a mandate for vaccinations. It is a testing mandate. Right? That is what it is. What it says is that everybody in these big employers has to get tested once a week, and if you don't want to get tested, then your employees can get vaccinated.
Let's be clear. This is a testing requirement, not a vaccination requirement, and that testing requirement is totally consistent with the history of OSHA. In fact, OSHA is in the business of mandating testing.
OSHA mandates blood testing for industries with high exposures to lead. OSHA mandates hearing tests for industries with high noise level exposure. OSHA mandates testing for exposure to silica in industries that are working in and around silica.
OSHA requires testing all the time. So that is what they are doing here--yes, on a bigger scale and, yes, also with an ability to avoid the testing if you get vaccinated. But that is what this requirement is really all about.
And it is working. It is working--the numbers going from 50 to 96 percent in a company like Tyson Foods after the vaccine requirement.
Lastly, let me say this: This general lack of seriousness from our Republican colleagues about a plague that has killed 700,000 Americans, it is just stunning to me. It is just stunning. These aren't bee stings. These aren't knee scrapes. This is a deadly pandemic that has ended the lives of 700,000 of our mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers prematurely, hundreds of thousands of Americans who should be sitting at the Christmas table, who should be at Hanukkah celebrations with their families this month. And they are gone; 700,000 Americans have disappeared.
But apparently, the inconvenience of a weekly test is so odious, is so revolting, that it is worth another 700,000 people dying--because that is what we are talking about: a weekly test. The OSHA rule does not mandate the vaccine; it is a way out of the weekly test, a weekly test that is a little swab swirled around your nostril five or six times for 30 seconds.
That is the requirement. That is the cost, the sky-high, Constitution-violating, unpatriotic cost the Republicans have been down here on the floor railing against for a month. Estimates suggest that that requirement can save thousands of lives. But apparently, the cost of a nose tickle is too great a cost to pay to save thousands and thousands of Americans from dying from a preventable pandemic.
I urge my colleagues to oppose this effort.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source