Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title United States Code, of the Rule Submitted By the Centers for Medicare Medicaid Services Relating to ``Medicare and Medicaid Programs; Omnibus Covid-19 Health Care Staff Vaccination''

Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, as my colleague from Utah just noted a minute ago, he has been asking for votes on this matter repeatedly. And today, he and others seek to invalidate a regulation issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that require most healthcare providers to be vaccinated.

And suffice it to say, this is something that the Supreme Court has ruled on. The Supreme Court has actually taken this up and agrees with our position that, in effect, this is an area where there is a strong public interest. And I believe what my colleague is proposing is just far outside the mainstream of opinion regarding vaccinations in America. There simply is a point where an anti-mandate agenda becomes a dangerous anti-vaccine agenda, and my colleagues on the other side, in my view, have crossed that line quite some time ago.

So I am just going to take a few minutes to describe why I think this is such an extreme position outside what the vast majority of Americans agree and in contrast to what the Supreme Court has said.

Americans support a vaccine provision or requirement for healthcare workers by a 20- or 30-point margin--no surprise about that. Everybody is concerned about sitting in a room with a doctor or nurse who may be contagious and who has been unvaccinated. I want to particularly emphasize the people affected here who are the most vulnerable based on what we have seen during the pandemic. We are talking about those with chronic illness and seniors.

Three-quarters of the Americans who died of COVID-19 were seniors, and 200,000 of those COVID deaths were Americans living or working in long-term care facilities like nursing homes. Many others were in and out of hospitals and doctors' offices routinely.

Making sure that healthcare workers are vaccinated, colleagues, I don't think is about any partisan position. It is about a commonsense policy designed to keep seniors--people I have worked with for 7 years; before I came to the Congress, I was director of the Gray Panthers--I think we all believe we want vulnerable people to be safe. So I am going to start by quoting a ruling by the Roberts Court--hardly, at this point, colleagues, some kind of radical left judiciary. Recently, they allowed the vaccine requirement for healthcare workers to go forward, and I am just going to quote:

Ensuring that providers take steps to avoid transmitting a dangerous virus to their patients is consistent with the fundamental principle of the medical profession: First, do no harm. It would be the very opposite of efficient and effective administration for a facility that is supposed to make people well to make them sick with COVID-19.

This vaccine provision or requirement is about keeping our healthcare workforce safe. Doctors and nurses in our country are overwhelmed. That is what they just told me as I went about my State, going to hospitals and vaccination sites and other healthcare programs.

These providers have been working nonstop for years under extraordinary stress, and what they are all about is honoring that Hippocratic Oath and trying to save lives. At times in this pandemic, our hospitals have been jampacked with COVID patients. If lots of doctors and nurses are out sick during a big COVID wave, that has got an impact on the standard of care for everybody. It drops for COVID patients, for stroke patients, for people hurt in car accidents. Our country desperately needs to protect our healthcare workforce.

Now, right at the heart of my colleagues' case--and as my friend from Utah said, we have had a number of debates about this subject--my colleagues say every person is unique, and there needs to be flexibility when it comes to vaccines. Colleagues, I am just fine with that. The fact is, the administration is allowing for medical and religious exemptions. Flexibility is written into the rule because that is just plain old common sense.

Vaccine requirements aren't anything new for healthcare workers. Flu shot requirements have been common for a long time. When you go into healthcare, it is understood that a vaccine requirement can be part of the job.

Furthermore, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has already pushed back the deadline for healthcare workers in several States to have their first vaccine dose. Originally, the deadline was in December. Now, it is February. The idea that this is somehow an inflexible and unreasonable mandate coming from nowhere is just plain wrong.

I would just close by way of saying it is time for us to move past these battles that I think regrettably continue to make this pandemic-- which strikes me as having nothing to do with politics--such political hutzpah.

It is good news that the Omicron wave is receding. With any luck, that will be the last major COVID wave that threatens to overwhelm our healthcare system. We all want our lives to get back to normal, and the way to do that is with smart public health policies--and smart public health policies, we know, consistently get broad support from the American people. That is what the vaccine provision requirement for healthcare workers is all about. That is why the Supreme Court upheld it.

I would urge that we oppose this joint resolution and do everything we can to make sure that healthcare workers are going to be vaccinated. And as I said to my constituents when I was home this weekend, what I wanted to make sure was that everybody who could, get vaccinated as quickly as possible.

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