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Floor Speech

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Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, I come here this evening, but I have been back home on recess breaks ever since there has been this idea of a vaccine mandate.

We have got a modern miracle in having vaccines available like they have been. It is part of the long journey against COVID. Along with therapeutics now, they are miracles. Yet getting vaccinated should be a decision between an individual and his or her doctor. It shouldn't be up to any politician, especially in a mandate coming down from that highest authority--our President--and he ought to be consistent with what he has said in the past. He said he would never make vaccines mandatory. He didn't keep his word.

Overreach--I have been here a little under 3 years, and I see it in so many arenas, a lot of it with good intention. We try to solve things here. I think the American public sometimes scratches its collective heads to say: Where are the results? Why does it cost so much? But in this case, you have got to also take into consideration our Constitution, our personal freedoms. It is at stake today.

The Federal Government has no authority to make anyone choose between getting a vaccine and keeping their job. Today, this body will stand up against this overreach.

Main Street--Main Street--is where I come from. When you have to explain to people constantly when they are scared by actions like this, can this possibly happen; will the government go through with it; will it somehow fall apart--well, when you have bad ideas, that eventually happens. And it is going to start here this evening. We have seen it in the courts. It has been repeated earlier here this evening how unpopular it is with the American public.

We did everything we could to keep individuals with their employers. We have spent billions, trillions of dollars doing so. The threshold for a small business then, when we were helping, was 500 employees. Now we have lowered it to 100. It has got people frightened across the country.

Small businesses face enough hardships. Most are finally getting some type of equilibrium with everything that has happened over the last year and a half, and now they have to contend with this.

As mentioned earlier, any businesses could get fined up to $14,000 per employee. That is more than we were lending them--money--in some small businesses over the recent past.

A lot of stuff just does not make sense. Listen to the number of organizations, ones that all play into telling us how they like to keep free enterprise going, keeping the private sector healthy: the National Federation of Independent Business, NFIB; National Retail Federation; National Restaurant Association; Association of Wholesale Distributors; American Trucking Associations; Associated Builders and Contractors; Associated General Contractors; American Pipeline Contractors; National Lumber and Building Material Dealers; Distribution Contractors. These are all businesses--I have another 10 I could mention--that come from Main Street America. It is not the tier of largest corporations; these are the businesses in our own hometowns. They are crying out: Do not follow through with this lunacy.

When you dig a hole, and you keep making it deeper, despite everything you are hearing, that is a bad business plan. You can always get out of it by just quit digging. And you are hearing it loud and clear.

We must focus on returning to the prosperity we achieved pre-COVID. One thing that will stop this recovery cold is the Federal Government getting in the way, as it is doing now.

His mandates are under fire in the courts. Main Street job creators are complaining against it. And tonight, the U.S. Senate must send a clear message: Back off on this bad idea.

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