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VACCINATION MANDATE
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2021, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy) for 30 minutes.
Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I appreciate my colleagues' tribute to Mr. Trumka. Whether or not we always agree with every issue, it is always great to see a life that is being honored here on the floor of the House of Representatives. I appreciate that.
I appreciate his sentiments about staff and the hard work the staff carries out each and every day here on the floor of the House of Representatives, as well as in each of our offices. I join my colleague in each of those things.
Madam Speaker, I would note that in the context of supporting workers, supporting the people across this country who are indeed engaging right now in many respects in saying no and striking and deciding that they are not going to participate, I would say a lot of that has to do, unfortunately, with the mandates that have been pressed on workers by the efforts of the President of the United States, President Biden, and an illegal and unconstitutional requirement that employers vaccinate their workers, or those workers might be forced to lose their job.
This has very real consequences. We have seen thousands of workers across this country protesting. Police members walking out. Firefighters walking out. Teachers walking out. People in industries and airlines and places across the country walking out. Nurses. Nurses, who were serving this country on the front lines during the pandemic last year when we didn't know all that was going on, and now they are being forced to decide to quit because of an unconscionable, illegal, unnecessary, unconstitutional mandate by the President of the United States. The government is forcing its citizens to make these tough choices.
Madam Speaker, I have a dear friend who lives in Alabama, and she said to me: I had a long talk with a doctor, and he is not anti-vax by any stretch, he has had this vaccine. He is concerned. I am concerned. This is from my friend: I have been a decade-plus living with multiple sclerosis, and I am not in any way anxious to provoke an immune response by getting the vaccination.
But now she is being forced to decide whether or not she can continue to teach. She just wants to teach. And now the university for which she works is saying she must get vaccinated or you are going to lose your job. Now, you say, well, just go seek an accommodation.
Listen to what the geniuses at the university at which she works sent out as their accommodation. To be eligible for possible exception, you must first establish that your refusal to be vaccinated is based upon a sincere belief that it is religious in nature. A refusal to be vaccinated does not qualify for an exception if it is based upon personal preference, concerns about the possible effects of the vaccine--I want to pause for a second--concerns about the possible effects of the vaccine does not qualify for an exception.
Yet, my friend, may now seek a religious exception because she has religious concerns about it. But she also has very real concerns as an MS survivor, someone dealing and living with MS. She is having to make a call about what is in her best interest. She is a mother of three children. Two of her children have had issues and reactions, arguably, attached to different vaccinations in the past.
And never before in the history of the United States of America has the Federal Government gone out and issued an edict from Washington demanding that the American people get vaccinated. Think about that. Never before in our history. It hasn't happened. Yes, it can happen in our military, although we should be careful about it. Nobody should get dishonorably discharged. Nobody should get discharged.
It has happened at places where the Federal Government has a direct impact on the employment of an individual. But all of these decisions have been left to local and State governments, local schools, local hospitals.
But no, no, President Biden in his infinite wisdom, such as that may be, has suggested now by mandate that everybody get vaccinated and every business must vaccinate their employees.
The fact of the matter is, we are now almost 600 days in to the 15 days to slow the spread. The government lying to its citizens, continuing to move the goalpost of normalcy, moving it further away.
Now the President wants a 97 percent vaccination rate, which he completely made up and pulled out of thin air, which is pretty much the entire definition of his entire incompetent, absurd Presidency.
The government of this country derives its just powers from the governed. The government of this country derives its power from the consent of the governed. And, thankfully, brave Americans across this country are standing up every day and telling this President to pound sand. They happen to be using a different colloquialism.
Southwest Airlines pilots spoke out and they just scrapped the plan to put unvaccinated employees out of work.
In-N-Out Burger. ``We refuse to become the vaccination police for any government.'' God bless them. Go get an In-and-Out burger.
General Electric employees of Greenville, South Carolina, walk out over a vaccination mandate.
A New York hospital stopped delivering babies as workers quit over a vaccine mandate.
Washington State employees quit, 1,900 of them fired over a vaccine mandate.
A trooper tells Governor Inslee in Washington to kiss my--fill in the blank--in the final sign-off before a vaccine mandate.
Seattle first responders.
Parents in California protest student vaccine mandates.
Vaccine opponents protest outside Stormont Vail following hospital's shot requirement.
A Wyoming teenager was arrested after refusing to wear a mask on school grounds, family says.
Well, God bless these individuals across this country who are telling this President to pound sand, and telling any Governor, or any member of the government in their State or local community exercising tyranny over their freedom as Americans to make the choices that they think are correct in their lives to pound sand.
But why are we in this position, Madam Speaker?
As I sit here, with rapt attention from all of the Members of Congress who are in here having a robust debate about the future of our country, as opposed to being out, say, having steak dinners with whoever the heck they are having dinners with in this town, and I ask: Why are we in this position? Why are we here?
Last week we discovered with very clear terms that Dr. Fauci misled Americans during questioning from Rand Paul in two different Health Committee hearings.
Dr. Fauci said on May 11, 2021: ``With all due respect, you are entirely and completely incorrect,'' speaking to Dr. Paul. ``The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.''
Later, ``However, I will repeat again, the NIH and NIAID categorically has not funded gain-of-function research to be conducted in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.''
In a July 11, 2021 hearing, Fauci said: ``Senator Paul, I have never lied before the Congress, and I do not retract that statement. This paper''--that you are referring to--``was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being gain-of-function.''
{time} 1800
But what do we now know?
We know that NIH did, in fact, fund gain of function research at the Wuhan lab. EcoHealth Alliance ``manipulated a coronavirus to generate up to 10,000 times the viral load, violating provisions of its National Institutes of Health contract that forbade unregulated research that could make a disease significantly more dangerous or transmissible.''
That quote was in the rightwing conspiracy media paper Roll Call.
My Republican colleagues on the Oversight and Reform Committee received a letter from NIH that confirmed that EcoHealth Alliance, which received money from NIAID, violated the terms of their NIH grant because they made the virus more deadly to humanized mice.
In a September letter to me, Dr. Fauci said that because the research at Wuhan was not anticipated to be gain of function, it was approved.
But why then did the Defense Advance Research Project Agency, known in this town as DARPA, reject similar research due to gain of function concerns?
The NIH had a definition of gain of function on its web page which was available as recently as October 19, just a couple of days ago, it has now been changed entirely.
Why would it be changed?
Why would the NIH change their gain of function web pages this week?
Could it be that Dr. Fauci was caught last week in his exchange by Dr. Rand Paul, my friend, the Senator?
Now they don't even say gain-of-function research on the website. They took it off. It now says EPPP research. Now it says instead of--
the term gain-of-function research describes a type of research that modifies the biological agent so that it confers a new or enhanced activity to that agent.
It now says, on limited occasions, when justified by compelling public health need and conducted in very high biosecurity laboratories, NIH has supported certain research that may be reasonably anticipated to create transfer or use-- Come on.
Madam Speaker, do you want to know why the American people don't believe their government?
They shouldn't. They shouldn't, Madam Speaker. They shouldn't believe the lies that are coming out of our national health leaders that are endangering the American people as Dr. Fauci's lies have been doing for the better part of 18 months.
Why trust an NIH that is by definition not being truthful?
Even if Dr. Fauci wants to hide behind the technicalities of the definitions of gain of function, why couldn't he with an ounce of humility--and even an ounce of humility--go before the Senate committee and say: Do you know what, Senator Paul? I am troubled by how much funding has been going into these research efforts at the Wuhan Institute. Do you know what, Dr. Paul? I have got concerns because I didn't know for sure what EcoHealth Alliance was doing.
But here is the problem with that. An NIH spokesperson told Vanity Fair that Dr. Fauci was ``entirely truthful'' in his statements to Congress.
Oh, thank you, NIH spokesperson.
And that he did not have the progress report that detailed the controversial research at the time he testified in July. Okay, pause.
At this point I would at least expect the good Dr. Fauci to have the humility to say: Hey, this is troubling. I don't know that our research led to COVID-19, but I know that we have been funding now, I know now we have been funding research that is in the ZIP Code of gain of function.
DARPA wouldn't even do it. The arrogance of this guy is that he is never going to admit that. He doesn't want to admit that he is wrong. He doesn't want to admit that NIH is neck-deep in this stuff because it is just straight up arrogance. That is why the American people have had it and they don't believe him. They don't believe NIH.
But it goes on further. EcoHealth Alliance appeared to contradict that claim. It said in a statement: ``These data were reported as soon as we were made aware, in our year 4 report in April 2018.''
Now, let me be clear, as a former Federal prosecutor, I don't know the facts. I don't know if EcoHealth presented that data in 2018. We will look into it. That is my job here. But I can promise you one thing, Madam Speaker, my Democratic colleagues on the other side of the aisle aren't going to look into it because they don't care because this has never been about health. This has never been about truth. This has always been about power.
Well, rather than just focusing on the NIH, why don't we take a minute to focus on the CDC, another one of these august national health organizations to which we are supposed to bow down and say, please tell me what I must do for my own health and the well-being of my family?
After facing backlash for saying the Federal Government was looking into a vaccine mandate, Centers for Disease Control Director Walensky took to Twitter to say that there would be no Federal vaccine mandate on July 30, 2021. I guess President Biden didn't get the memo? Oh. It is not a Federal vaccine mandate. I am just saying businesses or you are a contractor with the Federal Government, then you must do it if you have over 100 employees.
Well, tell all that to my friends and the people around this country who are right now facing the decision of giving up their livelihood and not having a paycheck because they want to make the best decision for themselves or their families.
My friend with MS who doesn't want to get a jab and wants to teach is being told she cannot because President Biden and the Federal Government is holding Federal contracts over the head of a State university which is too gutless and cowardly to tell the Federal Government to pound sand. That State--a southern State--should be absolutely ashamed of itself. That State should be telling the Federal Government to go straight to you know where.
The CDC takes an absurd all-or-nothing approach to the vaccine. For example, if a teenager recovers from a COVID-19 infection and is immune and this teenager receives one vaccine causing hospitalization for myocarditis, the Centers for Disease Control suggests getting a second dose of the vaccine once the heart has recovered.
Do you know what, Madam Speaker?
The CDC director can go straight to hell. If that is my son or daughter, no way. No way.
The CDC should be ashamed of itself for doing this, absolutely ashamed of itself. Go talk to the parents of those who have died. Go talk to the families of the moms who aren't here.
I am not sitting here suggesting that I know in my infinite wisdom what is best for every American in terms of getting a shot. I don't know. I am not a doctor. But what I am is a Congressman, and a Representative who swore an oath to the Constitution of the United States that I would stand up to secure the blessings of liberty so that every American can make the decision for himself or herself as to whether or not they take any medicine.
Again, never in the history of the United States have we had a Federal mandate from a President who doesn't, frankly, know east from west come down here and tell us that we have got to take a shot.
The CDC refuses to talk about natural immunity.
Why?
Why will the CDC not talk about natural immunity?
In fact, they point to an inconclusive study that prompted the director to say: ``If you have had COVID-19 before, please still get vaccinated.''
There are at least 89 studies that affirm natural immunity is effective and long-lasting from a prior infection, yet our public health experts are uninterested. I have to go to studies in Israel. I have to go look at studies in the United Kingdom in order to get facts about natural immunity.
Now, why would that be?
Surely it is not because anybody is self-interested or financially interested in how much these pharmaceutical companies are making throwing vaccines at every American.
A U.K. office for national statistics report published Monday found those who catch the delta variant are around 71 percent less likely to test positive again, 4 points higher than double vaccinated individuals.
I am not saying you want to go catch the virus, Madam Speaker, but if you have had the virus, then you may not want to get the vaccine. And yet our scientists, scientists whom we now know to be less than truthful, refuse to acknowledge the benefits of natural immunity.
What about the FDA?
Can we trust the FDA?
The FDA still has an image of a horse tagged with a web page saying:
``Why you should not use ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID-19.''
Doctors have been denied ivermectin and have not been able to get access to this treatment which has proven effective, at least to some, in treating COVID.
Again, what happened to right-to-try?
What happened to the ability to go to the doctor of your choice, Madam Speaker?
Dr. Pierre Kory conducted an analysis of randomized controlled treatment trials of ivermectin used against COVID and found statistically significant reductions of mortality. Our FDA and CDC are preventing patients from receiving ivermectin. Now, I got a prescription for ivermectin. So did my wife. We each went to go get it filled. It is not horse medicine. I didn't roll down to Tractor Supply Company, which I go to often, to go get supplies for the land on which I live. And, yes, I have seen the ivermectin in the cabinet at Tractor Supply Company. No, this was a prescription for pills of ivermectin that we wanted to have on supply in case we thought we needed it.
So we go down to get it filled at a pharmacy, CVS, and the first time my wife went down there they whispered in the back. They said, oh, we can't do that. We can't fill that prescription.
Well, finally one person came in and overrode and said, look, do they have a prescription? Oh, yeah. Well, then, go ahead and fill it.
So they filled the prescription. Then I go down to get the prescription filled that I got a few weeks later, and they wouldn't fill it. I went to another pharmacy, and they wouldn't fill it. Finally, I went to a third one, and we got it filled.
Why is that? Why is that?
The FDA has delayed the Merck COVID-19 pill likely until 2022. Now, some of my research has shown people out there questioning why we need the Merck pill, and maybe this is just another way to have another pharmaceutical company make a bunch of money on the back of COVID, but I also have a lot of smart doctors who are talking about the Merck pill as a potentially highly beneficial pill.
Well, why can't we just all agree to right-to-try?
We are in the middle of a pandemic where people are getting sick, and individuals can't go try this medicine because we are waiting on the FDA and all the geniuses to go through every possible scenario despite very positive returns on the initial tests?
Remdesivir was so effective in its phase 3 randomized control trial that researchers stopped accepting new participants, no COVID patient who received the drug died compared with eight deaths in the placebo group. When a drug shows to work this well, it is considered unethical to continue to give sick subjects a placebo. The government has even prepurchased 1.7 million treatment courses. The medication doesn't even require refrigeration and it's easy to ship. Yet practicing physicians right now with patients who might die can't give this drug to any sick patient because of regulatory barriers.
So we have mandates that you do stuff that may not even help in the slightest bit, Madam Speaker, and may, in fact, hurt you--mandates--and we have regulatory barriers preventing you from being able to figure out how to go take care of yourself or your loved ones.
Again, I am not saying whether I think that drug is particularly efficacious or not. I don't know. I am not a doctor. But what I am is someone who can read. What I am is someone who believes in freedom. And what I am is someone who believes, Madam Speaker, that you should be able to go to the doctor of your choice and make a decision for you and your family with the best information available and a right-to-try.
What about HHS as a whole?
Can we trust HHS?
After watching all the debacle that has been NIH, Dr. Fauci, and gain-of-function research; after watching what we have seen with the CDC and refusal to look at natural immunity; after looking at what we have seen with respect to the FDA and slow-walking drugs and access and hiding and obfuscating those drugs which may be beneficial to people; how about the HHS now limiting the State of Texas' ability to receive monoclonal antibody treatments?
I was on a conference call with HHS leadership saying, why are you cutting our supply in half?
Monoclonal antibody treatments are working.
I said, tell me what--tell me, give me the amount that is currently in inventory, give me the amount that can be produced on a weekly or a daily basis by the companies that can manufacture it, and then tell me what you believe the demand is and why you are standing in the way of the orders that we are putting in in Texas to try to take care of our folks or Florida or any other State?
They wouldn't and couldn't answer the question because it wasn't about the math. I pressed them. I asked a second question. I got back in queue on the whatever, Zoom call--or I think it was an audio conference call--I got back in and asked again, and they wouldn't answer because it wasn't about the math. It wasn't about the numbers. It was about going after Texas and Florida and saying, you are not going to get monoclonal antibody treatments.
{time} 1815
The week of September 13, 2021, Texas received 23,640 doses. This week, Texas is receiving 11,400 doses, more than a 51 percent decrease.
There is no reason for the Federal Government to be standing in the way of a State being able to work with their doctors to meet demand to save lives. The only reason is the power play of people who are absolutely so arrogantly full of their own views of the world that they want to press them upon the American people, as does Dr. Fauci, as does CDC Director Walensky, as does the leadership at the FDA, HHS, generally.
These are the health experts, by the way, who also endorsed mass house arrest of Americans by locking down, the lockdowns. Remember 15 days to slow the spread? What a joke.
The lockdowns deteriorated people's mental health and inflicted more damage on women and girls.
Among adolescents aged 12 to 17, the average number of visits to an emergency room for suspected suicide attempts was 22 percent higher during 2020 and 39 percent higher during the winter of 2021 than the corresponding period the year before. During last winter, emergency department visits for suspected suicide attempts were 50 percent higher.
Reporting also shows more than 400,000 fewer child welfare concerns were reported.
According to CDC data, overdose deaths killed a record number of Americans in 2020, almost 100,000 in 2020.
Don't get me started on the border. Don't get me started on fentanyl. Don't get me started on the incompetence of an administration that would allow people to get abused in the name of open borders, saying that it is somehow compassionate while little girls get sold into the sex trafficking trade and fentanyl pours into our communities and into the lives of our loved ones and our young people who are dying by the thousands.
Don't get me started about the empowered cartels. Don't get me started about the ranches getting overrun, the people getting abused, the dead bodies of migrants in south Texas.
It is all the same thing, and it is all the same power play by a Federal Government led by a President who wants to give lip service to doing something to help this country while playing woke politics and allowing the American people to get abused and harmed in the process.
Just as we have seen unfold in Loudoun County when a little girl, a ninth-grader, gets raped in a bathroom, and the father, upset, goes to the school board meeting and in the school board meeting dares to speak up and then is dragged down, bloodied, arrested because he was there to defend his little girl who got raped by a boy wearing a skirt in the bathroom of the high school he sent her to to get educated.
Then that school board, sweeping this all aside in the name of wokeness and political correctness, what do they do? They ignore it, and then he becomes the poster child for so-called domestic terrorism.
Then what happens? Another little girl gets abused by the same boy at a different high school in that district in Loudoun County, Virginia. Leftist wokeism running our schools with Virginia Democrats allowing it to happen because that is what is happening every single day in the Commonwealth of Virginia in Loudoun County.
This is the state of our country at the moment, bowing down to the altar of woke politics; of the power hungry, the elite who think they know what is best for you, the same people who walk in and say: Parents don't have a role in the classroom. Parents don't have a role in the schools. Parents don't have a say in what is going to be decided in the school boards.
Nothing could be more un-American. Nothing could be undermining the future of this country more than to separate parents from the education of their children.
Nothing could do more damage to our country than undermining faith in institutions because so-called medical professional experts are telling lies, distorting the truth; refusing to be humble, to come forward and say they don't know the answer; to be honest about what taxpayer dollars are going to fund, what kind of research in China; having the slightest bit of humility to say maybe we don't know all the answers, maybe we should allow parents, doctors, families to make decisions that are in the best interests of their children, the best interests of themselves.
Madam Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has 2 minutes remaining.
Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, we have to make a decision about what we are going to do to carry this country forward. We have to decide whether or not we are going to give people information that they can believe in and trust and make sure that the institutions that are running this country, that are providing information for this country, can be relied upon.
The American people are waking up. The American people are waking up to the lies and the distortions that have been shoved into their faces by the media, by the schools, and by the very people who are supposed to be running our national healthcare institutions and providing information that you can rely upon.
The American people are waking up, and they are taking back their country. And the response shouldn't be, as it was from the Attorney General of the United States, to send the FBI in to go after parents in school boards. The response shouldn't be to sweep aside the concerns of a mom who wants to teach and has MS and doesn't want to get a vaccine and then has to choose and might get fired.
That should not be the response of a competent and respectful government. That should not be the response of a government that is limited in power and is supposed to derive its power from the consent of the governed.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to refrain from engaging in personalities toward the President.
____________________
SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 188
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