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Floor Speech

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Mr. VANCE. Mr. President, all of us have lived through the failed experiment of mass mandatory masking. Today, I want to ensure that we do not subject the American people to this tyranny again for the sake of nothing.

We have recently seen a seasonal uptick of COVID cases across the country. This is not something to worry about. I don't like this fact that COVID is here to stay. Seasonal upticks in a respiratory virus are exactly to be expected. They shouldn't cause panic from our leadership or from our country, and they shouldn't cause us to reimpose a policy that has failed time and time again.

Many are now calling to bring back mask mandates and regulate social gatherings. I have heard some of my friends on the opposite side of the aisle saying that no one is trying to do this, but let's just recapture and summarize the last couple of weeks in August. Lionsgate studios asked its employees to wear masks at their filming facility. Last week, Kaiser Permanente reimposed a requirement of staff and visitors to wear masks at its Santa Rosa, CA, facility. Schools such as Morris Brown College in Atlanta, and even local public schools here in the DC area, have reimposed mask mandates.

Now, it is not just that masks--according to randomized control studies--do no good; it is that they could actively cause harm. We know a generation of school children have suffered significant speech and developmental disabilities because this country panicked instead of using its brain and forced toddlers and small children to wear masks. We cannot return to the failed policies of the COVID pandemic.

I am not mad that we screwed up. I made mistakes. Many people in this body made mistakes. What I do think that we should avoid is repeating the mistakes in 2023. Let's learn from the mistakes that we made instead of just doubling down on them.

This policy does not set anything for an unlimited period of time. It says that for the next 15 months, the government can't force you to wear a mask on planes, on public transit, or in public schools. Taxpayer dollars cannot be used to force and enforce a mandate against our people. It is not setting a policy that we cannot deal with pandemics in the future. If something else comes--God forbid--then let this body deal with it at that time.

But now, let's heed the message from the American people, and let's learn the lessons of the past couple of years. Mandatory masking was a failure. It had costs for very little benefit, and we shouldn't repeat it.

2738, the Freedom to Breathe Act, which is at the desk; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed; and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

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Mr. VANCE. Mr. President, let me offer a couple of thoughts in response.

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Mr. VANCE. Mr. President, I know we are on a short timeline, but let me just offer a couple of points in response, and then I will let this body go on with its business.

No. 1, Senator Markey mentioned the tragic number of Americans, over 1 million, who lost their lives due to COVID. And I agree that it is a tragedy, and I wish that we hadn't lost them. But we lost them in spite of some of the most aggressive masking policies in the world. If mandatory masking were going to save our citizens, it would have already done so. That is the first point.

The second point is that this legislation doesn't prevent any of our citizens from wearing masks. If you would like to wear a mask, of course, you have the right to do so, but the Senator talked about freedom. What I would like is for the freedom of a school child to not be thrown out of the classroom because he doesn't want to wear a mask. I would like the freedom of airline passengers to be able to go and visit their families and not be thrown off an airplane because they refuse to wear a mask. Freedom is fundamentally about respecting that you might have a different view than I do, respecting that, accepting it, and not using government mandates to force our fellow citizens to do exactly what we want them to do but to let us all figure this out together.

The final point that I will make here is I heard some pretty alarming rhetoric from my friend on the other side of the aisle. We are about to have some serious respiratory problems. We always do in the fall, and maybe it will be worse this fall and this winter than before. But I think that what our children most of all need--and I am the father of three kids under the age of 7--they need us to not be ``Chicken Little'' about every single respiratory pandemic and problem that confronts this country.

We are going to have people who get sick from viruses. It has always been thus, and the way to respond to it is with calmness, resolve, and strategic thinking, not by pretending the world is ending because what has always happened is going to happen once again.

We cannot repeat the anxiety, the stress, and the nonstop panic of the last couple of years. That is what this legislation is about. End the mandates; end the panic; and let's get back to some common sense.

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