Congress Overturns Military Vaccine Mandate
A truly bizarre vote.
WaPo (“Congress moves to end military’s coronavirus vaccine mandate“):
Congress is poised to force the Pentagon to end the military’s coronavirus vaccine mandate under compromise legislation to authorize funding for the Defense Department, a major capitulation for Democrats who championed the policy despite sharp controversy in the ranks over its implementation.
The abrupt termination of the requirement, which became Pentagon policy in August 2021, came after Republican lawmakers threatened to stymie action on the $858 billion bill. It was incorporated into the legislation in apparent defiance of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who “supports maintaining the vaccine mandate,” Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said this week, adding: “The health and readiness of our forces is critical to our warfighting capability and a top priority.”
Yet Republicans who championed the repeal were quick to label it a first step, calling on the Biden administration to reenlist service members discharged under the policy.
“Make no mistake: this is a win for our military,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in a statement late Tuesday night, warning that when the GOP takes over the House next year, Republicans will “work to finally hold the Biden administration accountable and assist the men and women in uniform who were unfairly targeted.”
[…]
The House is expected to pass the measure Wednesday, setting up a vote in the Senate that would send the measure to Biden for final approval — and maintain a six-decade long tradition of Congress passing defense authorization bills, even when other parts of the federal government failed to receive such focused consideration.
But the new programs may not come online for some time. Lawmakers have yet to reach a deal to fund the government with a budget bill that would take all of the authorized measures into account. And as the deadline looms — the current federal budget expires Dec. 16 — Congress may have to pass a short-term spending measure to avert a government shutdown before the holidays, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) predicted Tuesday.
Military Times (“Military COVID-19 vaccine mandate repealed in defense bill compromise“) adds:
House and Senate lawmakers on Tuesday night unveiled plans for a compromise defense authorization bill which would boost the military budget by 8% over fiscal 2022 levels and rescind the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for service members.
[…]
Although the authorization bill is considered must-pass legislation annually, this year’s deliberations have dragged on for months.
For the second consecutive year, the Senate did not pass its own version of the bill, opting instead to make adjustments to the House-passed version from this summer rather than taking amendment votes on their own military policy priorities.
And in recent days, numerous Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate threatened to oppose the measure unless it included language dumping the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin both defended the vaccine requirement this week as necessary for military health and readiness. Whether the president may veto the final legislation because of the provision’s inclusion remains unclear.
So far this year, more than 8,000 active-duty service members have been dismissed from the ranks for refusing the vaccine. The vast majority of troops have agreed to the shots.
Opponents have argued that because most troops are young and fit, and because the military is in the midst of a recruiting crisis, the vaccine mandate is discouraging some potential recruits and forcing others out of the ranks.
The authorization bill language does not include any language mandating troops dismissed for refusing the vaccine to be reinstated, another demand of conservative lawmakers.
With Biden having declared the epidemic over, the urgency of the mandate is less clear than it once was. Still, this is a bizarre hill to die on. The US military has required all manner of vaccines as a condition of service—and often more in preparation for overseas deployments—since time immemorial. This one has been proven safe and reasonably effective. Indeed, the reason we’re in an endemic phase is that COVID-19 is no longer a death sentence for the vast majority of people.
One would think this action would bolster lawsuits of those who have been kicked out—at least in some cases denying folks the opportunity to earn pensions they were close to earning—for refusal to comply. For that matter, those who were coerced into getting the shots even over religious objections would seem to have a case. Yes, sovereign immunity makes suing the government hard; but this would seem to make it easier.
This insinuates the idea that the individual’s beliefs and feelings have a priority as a member of the armed forces. This inevitably leads to a breakdown of good order and discipline and to the idea that the military is a jobs program, not an organization dedicated to something higher.
The religious liberty scam will further undercut the military in the years ahead.
If a armed forces member believes an idea so much that he can’t obey orders, then they have a right to resign but not a right to continued employment.
Now – they are young and fit now. However once you catch an avoidable communicative disease that has a large chance of permanent damage, you are no longer fit. They’re going to find in the coming decade that less people are eligible for recruitment because of long COVID as it seems the idiots who refuse the vaccine are the ones they’re looking to recruit.
I’m just caught COVID two weeks ago – Sunday was my second test showing I was clear. I’ve got the worst wracking cough that renders me breathless and I’m getting worried as it’s not fading. If that’s 4-5% of infected people end up with long COVID with symptoms like that or chronic fatigue, they are absolutely not deployment-ready. What’s the point of lowering standards to try to alleviate the recruitment crisis if the people you want to recruit aren’t eligible anyways?
From the wild speculation/CRT Trigger Warning Dept.:
and who is the first Sec Def. from what race, again? Somebody remind me, I’ve forgotten.
Sorry, Prof. Cracker, I was napping in class and missed the snark in your comment. I actually went and looked it up, and, well duh!
But OTOH, I’m not surprised that GQP congress kritters fight these ill-advised feckless battles. That’s who and what they are.
So, those soldiers that have religious objections to being led by a woman have a right to not be led by a woman? Or a queer person?
Is that where where we’re going with this? Because that’s what your framing suggests.
@Beth:
What’s more, they are not “religious” objections but “personal belief” objections. As far as I know, most sects have not officially rejected the vaccine so it’s not a doctrinal thing but a personal interpretation of “faith”. The recent insidious conflation of organized religion (which has historical protection) with whatever whacky BS a person is falling for at the moment is poison, especially for an organization that relies on chain of command for authority. If you place the vacillating beliefs of the individual (because how many were antivax before COVID denial kicked in?) first, there’s no telling what they “feel” or “believe” on any day as you cannot demand consistency from inconsistent sources. Organized religion at least has official stances you can be seen as adhering to or not; leaving it to “yeah, I’ll obey this rule or person today but not tomorrow depending on how I’m feeling” is chaos.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: For whatever reason, Republicans became the anti-vaxxers during COVID. It certainly predates Lloyd Austin being tabbed as SECDEF.
@Beth: @KM: I think the whole “religious objections” thing is bullshit. But Congress has effectively said that getting this particular vaccine is not mission essential. That strikes me as a big deal, given the rationale for requiring the troops to get vaxxed. (Which I supported, of course.)
Support for other vaccines has dropped among Republicans so I expect this to expand to other vaccinations. I can just hear it on the next deployment. “Lieutenant, take your platoon and patrol along sector B like we planned last week. Yes Sir captain, all 5 of them? Lieutenant did you say 5? Yes sir, those are the only ones that accepted the vaccinations. The others were advised by their ministers, talk show hosts and random Youtube people to avoid our vaccines.”
Steve
Fine. Let the COVID vaccine refusers back in, then tag them as non-deployable, just as refusers of any of the other vaccines required for deployment. Now they just can’t be promoted or re-enlist. The problem will eventually solve itself.
A classic case of conservatives believing their own bullshit. Trump realizes COVID is hurting the economy, that a recession is bad for his re-election chances, and so he decides to be anti-anti-COVID*. So Republicans, especially my beloved governor DeUseless, see that it seems to be working for TFG and run with it, copying his approach and expanding on his lies. So all the MAGAts jump on the bandwagon and now we’re likely to have a measles outbreak because they’ve always believed we were against
Eastasiavaccines. It’s akin to pretending we have a tradition of funerals for miscarriages.And it now seems to be conventional wisdom that we shouldn’t have closed schools or businesses. It’s amazing how quickly we memory holed a million dead.
____
* There’s a large body of opinion that TFG would have been reelected had he taken COVID seriously, allowed the bureaucracy to handle it, and acted presidential. Perhaps true, but unproven. And as I often argue, failure of a plan is not evidence for absence of a plan. Nor have I ever said TFG is smart.
@James Joyner: That’s why I tabbed it as being from the “wild speculation” department. I knew someone was going to want to carry the GQP ‘s water for them and wanted to make it easier.
I still find it mildly hilarious that if you join the military you get a full dose of a bunch of vaccines using a jet injector, but for ReAsONs, a covid vaccination is somehow a bridge too far.
@James Joyner:
Someone should remind Congress about a certain warship that was unavailable to perform its mission due to Covid. I wonder who they will blame when their motivated reasoning results in a bad outcome