Emergency Security Supplemental to Respond to January 6th Appropriations Act, 2021

Floor Speech

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Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, in 1887, Lord Acton wrote a series of letters to Bishop Creighton, letters that would echo down across the centuries. Lord Acton wrote:

I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost [exclusively] bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.

Mr. President, those words were true in 1887, and they are true today. If you want to understand how power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, look no further than the other Chamber in the U.S. Capitol.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi is drunk on power. The orders that Speaker Pelosi is issuing are abusive and unprecedented. Speaker Pelosi has decreed to Members of the House of Representatives, elected by the people, that: If you dare walk onto the floor of the House of Representatives without a mask, I, Speaker Pelosi, shall fine you.

Who the hell is she to be fining Members of the House?

But you know what? She is not done with that. She is not done with disrespecting our Constitution, disrespecting our democratic system that elects leaders. She goes further, to the good men and women who work here in the U.S. Capitol. We are surrounded by men and women who have chosen to come and work for the public good, and here is what Speaker Pelosi has decreed: If you dare walk in the hallway without a mask, I, Speaker Pelosi, will arrest you. I will put you in jail. I will fine you.

That is an absolute and complete abuse of power. She has no authority to disrespect the men and women who work here, to threaten you with physical harm, to threaten you with imprisonment.

And why does she do so?

She does so for one reason: political theater.

We are coming through a very difficult year and a half. Our Nation and the world has endured a pandemic. We have collectively taken extraordinary steps to defeat this pandemic, and we are coming out on the other side. We saw our Nation, we saw the private sector come together with remarkable inventiveness and produce vaccines in record times, and we have seen hundreds of millions of people getting those vaccines. We are in the process of beating this pandemic.

Not too long ago, the CDC recognized what was obvious then and is obvious now: vaccines work. And if you are vaccinated, you don't need to wear a mask.

The CDC issued that ruling, and I remember that day well. I had been vaccinated a couple of months before then, and after allowing the time for the vaccine to become effective, I decided I was going to stop wearing a mask. Why is that? Because vaccines work, because I believe in science. So I stopped wearing a mask. And there were a handful of Senators on the Senate floor who had been vaccinated, who stopped wearing masks.

Then the CDC, like the Oracle of Delphi, issued its proclamation. Hold on to your seats now. The CDC said that vaccines work, that if you are vaccinated, you don't need a mask. It was truly miraculous in this Chamber watching what occurred, as within days, every Senator in the Chamber began removing their masks, one after the other, after the other--not just Republicans; Democrats too. We all had our masks off.

Mr. President, I ask you, the day before the oracle of Fauci spoke, did vaccines not work? Did science not operate? No. It was obvious then and it was obvious on the day that the oracle of the CDC spoke that vaccines work, which is why every Democrat took their mask off.

But fast-forward to this week. The CDC issues the new proclamation. Apparently, according to the CDC, vaccines don't work anymore. That science thing? Inoperative. We have more important things to worry about, like politics.

As an aside, has there ever been an institution in American public life that has more discredited itself more rapidly than the CDC? A year and a half ago, the CDC was one of the most respected medical and scientific organizations on the face of the planet. Today, the CDC has willingly allowed itself to be politicized, to behave as an arm of the DNC, and their credibility is in tatters. It is a joke.

We have seen the emails from Dr. Fauci where he said in the midst of the pandemic: Masks don't work. They are not effective. People shouldn't use them.

Then we saw him say: Oh, no, no, no; masks work. But I lied to the American people when I said they didn't work because I didn't want them to wear masks because I wanted first responders to get them.

Now, pause for a second and think, what the heck is a scientific leader doing lying to the American people supposedly for our own good? The willingness to twist facts to meet political expediency has been stunning.

The CDC's ruling this week is not accompanied by any data. They did not roll out studies. They did not roll out facts. They did not say suddenly vaccines aren't working. Instead, they just said: Trust us. We have double-super-secret studies that we are not going to tell you based on double-secret-super data that we are not going to show you, but trust us because we behave like political hacks and obey us anyway.

By the way, the CDC plays an interesting little game. The CDC says: These are recommendations. These are just recommendations.

Then their faithful little foot soldiers, the Democratic officeholders, come in and make those recommendations mandates. And there is no one more willing to do so than Speaker Pelosi. And then, by the way, the local government Democrats who mandate ``you must obey the CDC,'' they throw their hands up and say: Hey, we are just following the CDC. And the CDC says: Hey, we are just making recommendations. And no one is accountable for anything.

This makes no sense.

One of the things the CDC rolled out this week is an edict that in schools, everybody must be masked--child, adult. It doesn't matter if you are vaccinated; it doesn't matter; you must wear a mask. Why? Who knows? It is not based on science, not based on medicine.

This virus has been unusual. We have seen that in certain populations, COVID-19 can be profoundly deadly. If you are very elderly, if you have serious comorbidities, this virus can and has been deadly. But we have also seen among children that the odds of children getting seriously ill from COVID-19 are extremely low. We have seen that children have not proven to be a meaningful vector in the spread of this disease. The science doesn't support special rules for schools, but do you know what does? Politics. Because the teachers union bosses came to the CDC and said: We want this rule in place. And the partisan enforcers at the CDC said: Ma'am, yes, ma'am, we will issue the order demanded by the union bosses.

Mr. President, give me any plausible argument that that is science, that that is medicine, that that is anything but rank politics. If a Democratic politician wants to say ``We are going to obey the union bosses,'' fine; that is their prerogative to do so. They can be held accountable by the voters. But the CDC is supposed to be following science. This is an abuse of power.

Let me point out my view. I think we should not have government mandates concerning COVID-19. There should be no vaccine mandates. Joe Biden wants to mandate Federal employees must get the vaccine. Who the heck is the Federal Government to tell people they must stick a needle in their arm and inject themselves with a vaccine? We should have no vaccine mandates. We should have no mask mandates. We should have no vaccine passports.

Let me be clear. I am someone who believes in vaccines. I have been vaccinated. Heidi has been vaccinated. My parents have been vaccinated. Heidi's parents have been vaccinated. But I also believe in individual choice. I believe in freedom. I believe in responsibility. It is your choice if you want to get vaccinated. It is not some drunk-on-power Democrat in Washington's choice to force you to do it.

Doesn't anyone in the Democratic Party believe in medical autonomy? Doesn't anyone in the Democratic Party believe in medical privacy, or are you so willing to exert power that it doesn't matter what the people say?

You know, one of the great ironies of the CDC's order: It will decrease the rate of vaccination in the United States. The CDC is telling America: Hey, this vaccine stuff doesn't work very well because, you know, if you get a vaccine, it doesn't matter; you have to put the same mask on, and you have to behave exactly the same. When the CDC rightly said ``If you are vaccinated, take your mask off,'' it encouraged people to get vaccinated. Hey, I want to take my mask off. Hey, I want to live my life. I want to go back to doing things that I like to do

Let me point out one particularly ridiculous argument. This week, one of the commentators on one of the news networks said--I am paraphrasing here, but I am paraphrasing pretty closely--that anyone who isn't vaccinated is arrogant and rude and inconsiderate.

I want to point out how imbecilic that argument is. So let's go back to this thing called science, which actually works. So here is the science: If you have been vaccinated, the odds of your getting COVID-19 are exceptionally low. Depending on which vaccine you got, the percentages vary but let's say on the order of 3 to 5 percent. Even if you do get COVID-19, the odds of your getting a serious case of COVID- 19, a case of COVID-19 resulting in hospitalization or death, are extremely low. This vaccine has been very, very successful.

If you understand that basic fact, then the next fact follows from it. If someone is unvaccinated and has COVID, they are little to no threat to someone who is vaccinated. If you have gotten your vaccine, you ought to be fine. The odds are very low that you are in jeopardy.

Now, could someone who is unvaccinated give COVID to someone else who is unvaccinated? Absolutely. That is why we are encouraging people to get vaccinated. But, you know what, the person who is unvaccinated--it is their damn choice. We don't have to be a nanny state, making decisions for everybody else.

I have to tell you, in my family, my dad didn't want to get vaccinated. My father, like the Presiding Officer right now, is a pastor. My dad is 82.

When I got vaccinated, I called him and said: Dad, I want you to get vaccinated.

He said: No, I don't want to. I don't trust it. It is new. I don't know. I don't want to.

I spent about a month trying to convince my dad to get vaccinated. My father can be pretty stubborn. I know that is hard to believe. For those of you who know my dad, you know exactly that is the case.

But, ultimately, I told my dad--I said: Look, you have been largely staying home during this pandemic. You want to get out. You want to be preaching in churches again. You want to be traveling. You want to be with people. Get the vaccine, and you will have the freedom to go do that.

You know what. He did, and he did. He is now back in the pulpit. He is back preaching. He has freedom again. That was his choice.

Why don't Democrats believe in individual choice anymore? Why do Democrats believe they can abuse power?

And let me be clear. Nancy Pelosi is telling someone who is an employee of the House: If you are vaccinated and you don't wear your mask--she will arrest you and throw you in jail.

How dare she? That is an abuse of power. And I will tell you, the American people are watching this political theater play out in Washington, and they understand what is coming next. They understand the same CDC that said, even though there is no science to back it up, even though there is no data to back it up, because the teachers union bosses want masks for everyone in schools, we will decree it. They understand the risk of what is coming next is that authoritarian status Democrats will order more shutdowns. We will order businesses shut down. We will order schools shut down. We will order churches shut down.

As we look at the past year and a half, few things are clearer than that the shutdowns were a catastrophic mistake. The politicians who ordered the shutdowns committed a catastrophic mistake. They destroyed millions of small businesses--restaurants, bars, stores gone out of business.

You look at great cities like New York City that became practically a wasteland. You look at something like Broadway. You think of all the actors and actresses, all of the writers and musicians, all of the sound and lighting engineers, all the carpenters, everyone who worked on Broadway--with a dictatorial flick of a pen, their jobs were destroyed. The American people are watching Democrats and recognize they are ready to do that again.

For people who go to church, we have seen Democratic officeholders discriminate against churches and say: Worshipping God in church is a public health menace. We have all seen the hypocrisy of the so-called experts who say: If you go outside and march and chant ``Black lives matter,'' zero risk of COVID transmission. Perfectly safe. If you go to church and sing ``Hallelujah,'' oh my God, everyone is going to die. People understand the hypocrisy of that.

This virus isn't political. I recognize perhaps you could tongue-in- cheek make an argument that since it originated in Wuhan, China, maybe it is a Communist. But the last I checked, viruses don't have political views. Do you know who does have political views? Politicians who are interested in their own power and want to convey a narrative regardless of the facts.

What Speaker Pelosi is doing is wrong. What the CDC is doing-- corrupting science with politics--is wrong. And it is time for the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House to stand on the side of the American people, to stand on the side of freedom, and to say: It is your choice to go to work, to go to school, to go to church, to live your life free of Lord Acton's abuse of absolute power.

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