H.Res. 75

Madam Speaker, let me thank the gentleman from Texas, now the new vice chair of the Rules Committee, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, there is a lot to take in from the opening remarks the gentleman has provided. I want to say one thing. He says that the Republicans have a mandate. I think the message of the last two elections was that the overwhelming number of people in this country said no to extremism.

And mandate? Democrats picked up a seat in the Senate. The red wave that was predicted by my Republican friends turned into a pink splash.

The reason why was because people were turned off by their extremism, and this in spite of all kinds of gerrymandering, crazy redistricting plans, and money like we have never seen in an election before, and we have the narrowest of narrow margins.

So if the gentleman thinks that there is a mandate here to embrace extremism, I beg to differ with that.

Madam Speaker, there is no denying that the situation with COVID has improved. Cases are down, deaths are down, and most of us have returned to the lifestyles we had before the pandemic. That is because of the incredible steps we have taken to keep people safe: vaccines, expanded healthcare, telework flexibilities, and other programs and initiatives that ensure Americans can lead healthy, full lives.

The rule before us today allows for the consideration of four measures, four reckless and regressive measures, to turn back the clock on all that we have gone through and learned over these last 3 years, and all under closed rules. Let me repeat that: all under closed rules.

H.J. Res. 7 would terminate, effective immediately, the COVID national emergency declared in 2020 by President Trump and renewed by President Biden in 2021.

This immediate reversal offers no off-ramps for relief programs and benefits, threatening aid for nursing homes and hospitals, additional support for the VA, as well as help for small businesses and more. It would end flexibilities to ensure more food-insecure people have access to SNAP, our Nation's first line of defense against hunger.

H.R. 382, the Pandemic is Over Act, would similarly repeal Health and Human Services' public health emergency declarations. This would roll back significant expansions to healthcare access and services for millions across the country.

H.R. 139, the SHOW UP Act, would force Federal agencies to return to prepandemic telework policies, despite the fact that the pandemic demonstrated workers from many industries could complete their jobs remotely.

H.R. 497, the Freedom for Health Care Workers Act, would remove COVID vaccine requirements for Medicare and Medicaid healthcare workers.

Now, if you take a second to think about these bills, not a single one makes things easier, safer, or more effective. They are sound bites. That is what my Republican friends are good at, sound bites, not legislating. They are good at making political statements but not solving problems.

Eliminating vaccine mandates for healthcare providers will not help healthcare providers. Instead, it increases their chances of getting sick, increases their patients' chances of getting sick.

COVID vaccines are safe and effective. You wouldn't know that if you listened to some of the commentary in the Rules Committee last night, but they are. They have protected millions of healthcare workers and their families from infections, hospitalization, and death.

Pulling the plug on the national and public health emergency declarations will throw Federal programs in our healthcare system into chaos. No longer will Americans be able to receive free COVID testing and treatments. Hospitals that already struggle to stock their shelves with proper PPE will face an even greater uphill battle.

I am not saying that these declarations should continue indefinitely. Nobody is saying that. President Biden announced yesterday that he plans to end the declarations on May 11. But we need time to understand the impact that ending the declarations will have on our country.

The responsible thing to do is to provide an orderly off-ramp for these agencies so that essential benefits aren't suddenly ripped away from those who need them most.

Essentially, getting rid of telework for Federal agencies when it has allowed our Nation and government to function through this historic pandemic is nonsense. Studies have shown that telework has been largely beneficial, resulting in increased productivity, reduced absences, reduced turnover, and reduced office costs. If corporate America has chosen to harness the net positive effects of teleworking, government agencies should, too.

Madam Speaker, my Republican friends who are screaming against teleworking provisions, I point out, for the Record, that Republicans voted by proxy more than 14,500 times in the last Congress.

Let me repeat that. Republicans voted by proxy--that means they were operating remotely--more than 14,500 times in the last Congress.

It was kind of comical. Last night, my friend from Texas in the Rules Committee said that Republicans were voting by proxy because they felt Democrats pressured them, that Democrats made them do that. Really? I mean, I have heard a lot of crazy things in my life, but I have never heard that used as an excuse. Give me a break.

I find it outrageous that some Members are so worried about government workers getting their work done from home while they themselves took advantage of proxy voting over the last 3 years. Guess what? Proxy voting is called telework, and my friends are okay with telework for themselves, but when it comes to Federal workers, no, they are not okay. I guess for House Republicans, it is do as I say, not as I do.

We had the chair of the Oversight Committee testify very passionately against telework last night, and he voted by proxy--get this--83 times. You can't make this stuff up.

We all know that COVID has moved into a new phase, and thanks to the use of safe, effective vaccines and other prevention tools, we are moving forward. We are learning to live with it, but let's not forget that over a million of our fellow Americans have died from it.

We should not ignore the fact that COVID continues to spread and mutate. It still poses a danger to people.

It is clear that House Republicans just want to pretend that COVID isn't still a problem, that science doesn't exist, and that telework doesn't have a place in the 21st century.

At the end of the day, these measures were introduced really out of spite. Our colleagues across the aisle are looking to undo everything we did, even if that means getting rid of important, effective measures that help American workers, families, and patients.

In closing, Madam Speaker, none of these have gone through committee. There were no hearings, not a single hearing.

Again, there were lots of questions raised about these bills in the Rules Committee last night, including whether or not title 42 would be overturned. The administration has one opinion, and the Republicans have another opinion. I don't know what the truth is. A hearing would have made a difference, but they couldn't even wait a couple of days to do a hearing. They just wanted to rush this to the floor to get a press release out.

There were not only no markups, but there were no amendments. We had amendments submitted to the Rules Committee last night not just by Democrats but by Republicans. They said: No. Closed. Can't even have a debate on the floor. Can't have an up-or-down vote.

Fifteen out of the 16 measures that this Congress has considered so far have been totally closed. I am thinking I need to call the Office of Attending Physician and get a neck brace because I have whiplash trying to reconcile what my friends said they were going to do and what they are actually doing.

I mean, the last time the Republicans controlled Congress, they presided over the most closed Congress in the history of the United States of America. Let me repeat that. The last time they were in control, they presided over the most closed Congress in the history of our country, and they are on track to try to beat their own record.

This is not what the Speaker promised. I didn't see the secret memo that Speaker McCarthy was circulating to get votes. Maybe there was some stuff in the secret memo that basically said that, you know, say one thing and do another.

The bottom line is this is not what anyone was promised, and there is absolutely no reason that we couldn't have waited a few days to do hearings on this stuff so we could decide whether or not any of these measures were the responsible thing to do or whether or not there were some additions that we could have made to these measures to make them responsible.

We all want to move on, but we want to do so responsibly. We all want to move beyond the national emergency, but we want to make sure that there are not unintended consequences. This is not serious legislating. This is political posturing, and it is a lousy way to begin the new Congress.

Madam Speaker, I urge a ``no'' vote on the rule and a ``no'' vote on the underlying legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

There is a lot to unpack here, but let me just tell the gentleman on the issue of national emergencies--by the way, I will add war powers-- we did a hearing in the Rules Committee on that in the last Congress. I did it with now-Chairman Cole. We thought that it was appropriate to do a hearing because we wanted to avoid any unintended consequences. So, we have done that.

It is now becoming very clear to me how this Congress is going to operate in the Rules Committee. The gentleman just made it clear that everything should go through regular order except what he thinks is important. If he thinks it is important, we can come here with a closed rule.

Then I am a little confused over the gentleman's pontificating on the fact these are only one-page bills and, therefore, they shouldn't be amended. I point out that the bill that they had the modified open rule on was a three-page bill, but is the number of pages of the bill going to be determinative of whether or not we have amendments or not?

The bottom line is people had some good ideas that they offered to the

Rules Committee last night. Not only that, but people also had a lot of questions. If you read the President's Statement of Administration Policy, he raises issues about title 42 that we seem to have a dispute on, but, boy, if you did a hearing and you did a markup, you might have been able to address those things.

I'm not saying we are moving too quickly. I am just saying we are not moving responsibly. Once your committees are constituted, you can have a hearing immediately. You can bring this to the floor next Monday or Tuesday if you want; but you chose to shut the system down.

Notwithstanding all of your rhetoric, not notwithstanding all of the pontificating on the need for more amendments to be made in order, a more open process, a more transparent process, you are beginning this session with closed rule after closed rule after closed rule.

Last night, the Committee on Rules reported out four more closed rules. That is the choice you have made. We have a sense of where you are going. The last time you were in charge, you presided over the most closed Congress in the history of the United States Government. I wouldn't be surprised if you beat your own record.

Madam Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to ensure that none of the bills in this rule take effect unless it is certified that they do not decrease Social Security benefits.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment into the Record along with any extraneous material immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Madam Speaker, Social Security is the bedrock of our Nation's social safety net. Since its inception, it has lifted millions of our seniors out of poverty. Protecting the benefits it provides should be a priority for this Congress.

As my Republican colleagues demand reckless cuts in exchange for paying our Nation's bills, Democrats will continue taking action to protect Social Security. This is not the first time Social Security has been under attack by my friends on the other side of the aisle.

Don't be fooled by their phraseology that they are only interested in ``protecting Social Security.'' We know that that is code for cutting benefits, for raising the retirement age, for throwing people off the benefit.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Larson) to discuss our proposal.

Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, oh my God. There are doctors who serve in Congress-- Democrats and Republicans. I hope that they will stand up and correct the misinformation. I mean, really.

The gentleman talks about herd immunity as if somehow that was some panacea here.

Madam Speaker, I include in the Record a letter from Harvard Medical School titled, ``COVID-19 diagnosis raises risks of heart attack, stroke.''

[From Harvard Health Publishing, Nov. 1, 2021]

COVID-19 Diagnosis Raises Risk of Heart Attack, Stroke

(By Julie Corliss)

In one of the largest studies of its kind to date,

researchers found strong evidence that heart attack and

stroke risk rises sharply in the weeks following a COVID-19

diagnosis. The findings were published Aug. 14, 2021, in The

Lancet.

The study included every person in Sweden diagnosed with

COVID-19 from Feb. 1, 2020, to Sept. 14, 2020--a total of

nearly 87,000 people. Their median age was 48, and 57 percent

were women. Researchers compared them with more than 348,000

Swedish people of similar age and sex who did not have the

virus.

In the week after a COVID-19 diagnosis, the risk of a first

heart attack increased by three to eight times. The risk of a

first stroke caused by a blood clot multiplied by three to

six times. In the following weeks, both risks decreased

steadily but stayed elevated for at least a month.

Other bacterial and viral infections (such as influenza)

are known to temporarily boost rates of heart attacks and

strokes. But COVID-19 infections appear to be especially

risky, perhaps because they trigger an exaggerated

inflammatory response that makes blood clots more likely .

Madam Speaker, a study found that in the week after a COVID diagnosis, the risk of a first heart attack increased by three to eight times. The risk of a first stroke caused by a blood clot multiplied by three to six times. In the following weeks, both risks decreased steadily but stayed elevated for at least a month.

Madam Speaker, I include in the Record a USA Today piece titled, ``Fact check: COVID-19 vaccines primarily designed to prevent serious illness, death.''

[From the USA TODAY, Jan. 21, 2022]

Fact Check: COVID-19 Vaccines Primarily Designed To Prevent Serious

Illness, Death

(By Valerie Paviionis)

As the omicron variant surges across the world and the

United States logs case numbers near and over 1 million per

day, the virus is prompting scientists to develop new

treatments and government officials to fight to curb the

spread.

While the Biden administration continues to urge Americans

to get vaccinated, a Jan. 10 Facebook post claims that Dr.

Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention, said vaccines can't prevent COVID-19

transmission. Other sites have shared the same claim, linking

Walensky's words back to an interview with CNN in August

2021.

``Our vaccines are working exceptionally well,'' Walensky

said to CNN's Wolf Blitzer in the interview. ``They continue

to work well for delta, with regard to severe illness and

death--they prevent it. But what they can't do anymore is

prevent transmission.''

Though Walensky did say these words on CNN, the original

interview was aired in early August, not recently. And while

it's true vaccines can't entirely halt transmission, experts

say they do reduce it--and reduce the chances of

hospitalization and death--as USA TODAY previously reported.

USA TODAY reached out to the original poster of the claim

for comment.

Various websites have written about the same claim,

amassing thousands of interactions on Facebook.

vaccine effects depend on several factors

In an email, Walensky spokesperson Kathleen Conley wrote

that in August 2021--when the interview originally ran--the

delta variant was the dominant variant in the United States.

Experts at that time said it was clear the vaccines

provided protection.

``Vaccines provide significant protection from `getting

it'--infection--and `spreading it'--transmission--even

against the delta variant,'' a professor of immunobiology and

molecular, cellular and developmental biology at Yale

University, told USA TODAY in November.

However, Conley noted data did show vaccines were ``less

effective at preventing infections and transmission with

Delta than with previous other variants.'' Omicron has proven

even more difficult to contain.

While mRNA vaccines--produced by Pfizer and Moderna--

continue to offer some level of protection against

transmission of omicron, other vaccines--such as Johnson &

Johnson, Sinopharm and AstraZeneca--offer ``almost no

defense,'' according to a Dec. 19, 2021, report by the New

York Times.

Other factors beyond variant type, vaccination type and

booster status can also influence whether or not a person

contracts COVID-19.

Dr. David Dowdy, associate professor of epidemiology at

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said it's

difficult to succinctly explain the vaccines' nuanced effects

on transmission.

A vaccine might protect you from a passing interaction with

someone at a grocery store, but it may not prevent infection

from someone you live with and share air with for several

hours a day.

``It gets very easy to misconstrue,'' Dowdy said. ``If

someone asks, do vaccines prevent infection, and you have to

give a yes or no answer, then the answer is no, they're not a

perfect blockade. But do the vaccines offer some protection

against infection? The answer is yes.''

vaccines still protect against serious disease

While vaccinations don't offer perfect protection against

the transmission of COVID-19, experts still urge people to

get vaccinated.

According to Conley, COVID-19 vaccination remains effective

against hospitalization and death caused by the virus.

Getting a booster, she added, further decreases these risks,

and the CDC continues to recommend that Americans receive

vaccines and boosters.

Dr. Chris Beyrer, professor of public health and human

rights at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public

Health, said both the mRNA and J&J vaccines were never

designed to prevent infection entirely.

It's ``very hard'', he said, to prevent infection via an

injected vaccine when you're dealing with a virus that enters

the body through the nose and mouth. Instead, the vaccine

trials were designed to study reduction in serious illness,

hospitalization and death. All three vaccines were highly

effective by this measure, Beyrer said.

``People who say, well, why would I take it if it doesn't

prevent me from getting infected?'' Beyrer said. ``You have

to remember that having a COVID-19 infection can be

everything from completely asymptomatic . . . to a head-cold-

like symptoms or full flu-like symptoms, all the way to

death. So what the vaccines are doing is really dramatically

increasing the likelihood that you will have mild infection.

And that's incredibly important.''

A CDC study released Jan. 21 showed booster shots of the

Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines were 90% effective at

preventing hospitalizations from the omicron variant.

our rating: missing context

Because it can be misleading without additional

information, we rate MISSING CONTEXT the claim that the CDC

director says vaccines can't prevent transmission of COVID-

19. While vaccines do not offer 100% protection against

COVID-19 infection, they can still partially defend against

infection. Vaccines remain effective at protecting from

COVID-19-caused serious illness, hospitalization and death.

Madam Speaker, I would highlight one of the quotes that I guess the gentleman was referring to.

``Though Walensky did say these words on CNN, the original interview was aired in early August, not recently. And while it is true vaccines cannot entirely halt transmission, experts say they do reduce it--and reduce the chances of hospitalizations and death.''

Madam Speaker, I include in the Record a study by the Commonwealth

Fund titled, ``Two years of U.S. COVID-19 Vaccines Have Prevented Millions of Hospitalizations and Deaths.''

[The Commonwealth Fund, Dec. 13, 2022]

Two Years of U.S. COVID-19 Vaccines Have Prevented Millions of

Hospitalizations and Deaths

(By Meagan C. Fitzpatrick, Seyed M. Moghadas, Abhishek Pandy, and

Alison P. Galvani)

It has been two years since the first COVID-19 vaccine was

given to a patient in the United States. Since then, the U.S.

has administered more than 655 million doses--80 percent of

the population has received at least one dose--with the

cumulative effect of preventing more than 18 million

additional hospitalizations and more than 3 million

additional deaths. The swift development of the vaccine,

emergency authorization to distribute widely, and rapid

rollout have been instrumental in curbing hospitalization and

death, while mitigating socioeconomic repercussions of the

pandemic.

As more transmissible and immune-evasive variants have

emerged over the past two years, the U.S. has responded by

deploying additional doses and variant-specific boosters. The

Omicron variants caused the largest wave of infections during

the pandemic. COVID-19 monovalent vaccines available at the

time were not as efficacious against the variant as bivalent

boosters introduced later, but the wave would have been more

devastating in the absence of vaccination.

As we mark the second anniversary of the U.S. COVID-19

vaccination campaign, understanding the impact of vaccines on

reducing disease burden is needed to inform future, evidence-

based actions. We therefore used a computer model of disease

transmission to estimate hospitalizations and deaths averted

through the end of November 2022. The model incorporates the

age-stratified demographics, risk factors, and immunological

dynamics of infection and vaccination. We simulated this

model to compare the observed pandemic trajectory to a

counterfactual scenario without a vaccination program.

Findings

From December 2020 through November 2022, we estimate that

the COVID-19 vaccination program in the U.S. prevented more

than 18.5 million additional hospitalizations and 3.2 million

additional deaths. Without vaccination, there would have been

nearly 120 million more COVID-19 infections. The vaccination

program also saved the U.S. $1.15 trillion (Credible

Interval: $1.10 trillion-$1.19 trillion) (data not shown) in

medical costs that would otherwise have been incurred.

Discussion

Our findings highlight the substantial impact of the U.S.

vaccination program on reducing infections, hospitalizations,

and deaths. Curbing hospitalization rates by reducing both

COVID-19 incidence and symptom severity is particularly

important amidst the strain on the health care system caused

by unusually high levels of flu and RSV (respiratory

syncytial virus). COVID-19 vaccination has preserved hospital

resources for individuals who would otherwise have not

received timely care.

Vaccination also has prevented many millions of COVID

infections. Although the acute phase of these infections may

not have required medical attention, each infection carries a

risk of long COVID and debilitating symptoms. Many of the

prevented infections would have been reinfections, which have

higher risk of death compared to initial infections. In

addition, as our previous analysis demonstrated, vaccines

have kept children in school, highlighting the societal value

of the ongoing vaccination program.

The estimated infections, hospitalizations, and deaths

averted by vaccination are particularly striking when

compared to the actual values observed during this time

period. Since December 12, 2020, 82 million infections, 4.8

million hospitalizations, and 798,000 deaths have been

reported in the U.S. In other words, without vaccination the

U.S. would have experienced 1.5 times more infections, 3.8

times more hospitalizations, and 4.1 times more deaths. These

losses would have been accompanied by more than $1 trillion

in additional medical costs that were averted because of

fewer infections, hospitalizations, and deaths.

The impact of the vaccination program is more remarkable

given the challenges posed by the multiple variants that have

arisen. The Omicron variants have been particularly immune-

evasive and drove the largest surge in COVID-19 cases to

date. However, the vaccines provided broader and more durable

protection against severe clinical outcomes, including

hospitalization and death. The reported ``mild'' nature of

Omicron is in large part because of vaccine protection.

A limitation of our study is that we modeled only viral

dynamics within the U.S. However, vaccines developed by the

U.S. were also deployed around the world, changing the

trajectory of the pandemic on a global scale. Without them,

more variants could have emerged or there could have been

greater importation of COVID-19 cases. In this regard, our

study underestimates the true impact of COVID-19 vaccine

development on U.S. outcomes.

The unprecedented pace at which vaccines were developed and

deployed has saved many lives and allowed for safer easing of

COVID-19 restrictions and reopening of businesses, schools,

and other activities. This extraordinary achievement has been

possible only through sustained funding and effective

policymaking that ensured vaccines were available to all

Americans. Moving forward, accelerating uptake of the new

booster will be fundamental to averting future

hospitalizations and deaths.

Madam Speaker, we have lost over 1 million of our fellow citizens to COVID, over 1 million in the United States alone; mothers, fathers, siblings, friends, and children, as well.

But the development of safe vaccines has meant that millions more lives have been saved. There is no question whether or not the vaccination is effective.

Madam Speaker, I would just highlight one of the findings in The Commonwealth Fund report.

It says, ``From December 2020 through November 2022, we estimate that the COVID-19 vaccination program in the United States prevented more than 18.5 million additional hospitalizations and 3.2 million additional deaths. Without vaccination, there would have been nearly 120 million more COVID-19 infections. The vaccination program also saved the U.S. $1.15 trillion in medical costs that would otherwise have been incurred.''

Here we are, after having gone through what we went through, after knowing the benefits of these vaccinations, and to hear what we are hearing on the floor, it really is disappointing.

Madam Speaker, I would ask the doctors in this Chamber, Democrats and Republicans, please stand up. Please correct the Record. Please tell people that vaccinations have been a good thing and that people should get vaccinated. They could save their lives.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I include in the Record a piece from the New York Post titled: ``GOP unveils `Commitment to America' plan to halt Biden, inflation, and crime.''

[From the New York Post, Sept. 23, 2022]

GOP Unveils `Commitment to America' Plan To Halt Biden, Inflation and

Crime

(By Steve Nelson)

House Republicans pledged Friday to end soaring inflation

and reduce crime by serving as a check on President Biden if

they reclaim power--calling the party's midterm election

platform a ``Commitment to America.''

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) announced

the big-tent framework inside an HVAC manufacturing plant

outside Pittsburgh, Pa.

``We want to roll [the plan] out to you, to the entire

country, to know exactly what we will do if you would trust

us and give us the ability to take a new direction for this

country,'' McCarthy said.

The kickoff featured a business-casual Q&A where dozens of

GOP legislators took turns fielding questions.

The Republicans vowed to rein in government spending to

lower the worst inflation in 41 years--with consumer prices

up 8.3 percent over 12 months as of August.

Speakers also promised to address crime, including record-

high illegal immigration, rising violent crime in cities and

fentanyl smuggling that's accelerated overdose deaths.

``The sad part is these Democratic policies have already

taken one month of your wages. So now the struggle that you

have is you're living through 12 months with only 11 months'

pay now because inflation is so high,'' McCarthy said,

blasting Biden's $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan spending

bill.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy unveiled the

Republican ``Commitment to America'' agenda at DMI Companies

in Monongahela, Pennsylvania.

``We've watched what's happened to our border--the millions

of people who are just walking across, people on the

terrorist watch list. Now we're watching it create every

community to be a border community,'' McCarthy said.

``Fentanyl is the number one killer of Americans between

the ages of 18 and 45. The poison starts in China and comes

across our border. Do you realize it's killing 300 Americans

every day? It's like an airliner crashing each day.''

No. 3 House Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York said

the GOP would be ``making sure that we stop the trillions and

trillions of reckless government spending that we have seen

under Democrat rule.''

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy vowed to stop

President Biden's spending policies if Republicans take the

House this fall.

``That will immediately help lower the cost of goods as we

seek to rein in inflation,'' she said at the event.

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) said, ``We have to have

oversight of what's happening in the administration and go

after the wasteful spending of the last administration and

return to normalcy--that $1 today means $1 tomorrow.''

Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) said Republicans would declare

fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction. ``That's what this is.

It fits the categories completely. And we're going to declare

it as that and use every resource we possibly can,'' he said.

Rep. Jim Jordan promised Republicans will nix President

Biden's plan on hiring more IRS agents over the next decade.

Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) said that unlike Democrats

under House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), ``we're not

going to have this top-down leadership.''

``Kevin McCarthy is going to rely on all of us to have

bottom-up leadership that comes from the districts,'' he

said. ``We got members here from New York all the way to the

border with Tony Gonzales. We got people that have different

approaches--all the way from David Joyce to Marjorie Taylor

Greene. But we're all united behind Kevin McCarthy.''

Republican speakers vowed various oversight efforts focused

on the Biden administration and hearings on the origins of

the COVID-19 pandemic.

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise said more hearings will

be held on border security.

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) said, ``We were

calling for hearings for over a year on the origin of COVID.

Shouldn't we know that? I mean, this is a basic question.

Millions of people across the globe died.''

Scalise said there would be many hearings on border

security too after more than 2 million people illegally

crossed the southwest border in fiscal 2022.

``We will give [Homeland Security] Secretary [Alejandro]

Mayorkas a reserved parking spot, he will be testifying so

much about this,'' Scalise said.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed she will follow the

Republicans' new agenda.

Speakers did not specifically mention expected

investigations of Biden's links to his son Hunter Biden and

brother Jim Biden's multimillion-dollar influence-peddling

businesses in China, Ukraine and other countries.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said the Republicans decided their

first bill will seek to nullify an IRS crackdown recently

authorized by Democrats to fund an environmental and health

care spending bill. He also mentioned oversight of allegedly

biased Justice Department actions.

``We're gonna look into this weaponization of the DOJ

against the American people . . . not to mention the border.

But specifically to the COVID issue . . . they told us so

many things that turned out not to be accurate,'' Jordan

said.

``They told us this thing [COVID] . . . didn't come from a

lab. Sure it looks like it did,'' he added. ``But they want

us to believe, `No, no, no, it was a bat to a pangolin to Joe

Rogan.' ''

``We are committed to doing the investigations that need to

be done,'' Jordan said.

The ``Commitment to America'' organizes various pledges

under four broad categories: the economy, safety, freedom and

accountability. The outline is an attempt to harness the

historical success of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's

1994 ``Contract with America,'' which propelled GOP gains

during President Bill Clinton's first term.

Madam Speaker, Republicans promised that as soon as they were in the majority, they would immediately move to address inflation. Well, we are a month into the 118th Congress with zero action to lower costs for families.

My question is, what happened? Why have Republicans spent all of January on messaging bills and trying to get their house in order?

I know it was a tumultuous week to try to elect a Speaker. We made history--4 days and 15 votes. Unprecedented.

Nonetheless, what happened to focusing on issues that were first and foremost on people's minds? Instead, we had abortion bans, and now we are dealing with this. I think we are dealing with a bill on socialism later today. I don't know what the heck prompted that.

In any event, I mean, really? Is that what my Republican friends think the American people want?

Again, I am going to just say that I am urging my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question so that we can have a vote on my proposal, basically, which says that Social Security benefits must be protected, that there is nothing in any of these bills or any bills going forward that would in any way negatively impact Social Security. Protecting the benefits that Social Security provides should be a priority for this Congress.

Quite frankly, none of us are comforted by any of the words that the Speaker has said. We don't know what is in the secret memo. I don't know what was promised on Social Security.

When Republicans say things like they want to protect the integrity of the program, that is code for they want to cut it. That is code for they want to raise the retirement age. That is code for all the things that our constituents, not just Democrats, but Independents and Republicans, fear might be coming down the road.

They are trying to use Social Security. They are trying to hold it hostage as part of this effort to get some sort of a deal on the debt ceiling.

They are basically holding this economy hostage. The good faith and credit of the United States, they are holding it hostage, ready to just throw it into the wind until they get these cuts in programs that help people.

Again, before I yield back at this point and let the gentleman continue with any speakers he has, I would say that the measures that we are dealing with today are concerning to us because there is a right way to wind down and a wrong way to wind down.

What we suggested last night in the Rules Committee as the right way to do this, and you can do it quickly, is to do hearings and make sure there are no unintended consequences, make sure there aren't vulnerable people who could be adversely impacted by your quick change of the rules. The majority would have none of it.

So, again, this isn't a serious effort. This is about messaging, and it is really disappointing.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I appreciate the gentleman's response, but I am not sure who he is responding to.

The question I asked was for physicians to come down here and to make it clear, contrary to what was said before, that these vaccines are not dangerous, that people should get vaccinated, that it could save lives.

People are still dying of COVID, by the way, and the idea that somehow we should be discouraging people from getting vaccinations by scaring them doesn't make a lot of sense to me. In fact, I think it is irresponsible.

I appreciate the gentleman's service to his patients, and I hope that he understands now his service is to the American people and that service includes getting out the truth and what is accurate and what is not accurate about these vaccinations.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, may I inquire how much time is remaining?

Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, our side isn't afraid to embrace change. We know that living in the 21st century means that we can and should use technology to improve Americans' quality of life.

We know that vaccines save lives, and we know that science is real. We know that ending these emergencies immediately is irresponsible.

Most importantly, we know that we are here to make progress, not to go backward, which is what the four measures this rule includes would do.

Again, let me say none of these bills went through committee. They could have, but none of them did.

Madam Speaker, 94 percent of the rules this Congress has dealt with have been completely closed. That is 15 out of 16 measures with no hearings, no amendments, no markups.

Is this what Speaker McCarthy promised you in his secret memo, that this is the way you will conduct business?

On top of all that, we are deeply concerned that a small minority on the other side of the aisle representing the most extreme elements of the Republican Conference is calling the shots.

We are worried about Social Security, and we are worried about Medicare. That is why we are asking people to vote ``no'' on the previous question, because we want to be able to put in place protections so that a fringe group can't mess around with Social Security, can't take away from people what they have earned.

It is not an entitlement. It is what people have earned in this country.

Madam Speaker, I urge a ``no'' vote on the previous question and a strong ``no'' vote on this rule.

There is a right way to do this and a wrong way to do this. The majority is in control and in charge. Take the time. Do the hearings. Ask the questions. Make sure there are no unintended consequences.

This is about the health and well-being of the American people. They deserve at least a hearing rather than a messaging bill rushed to the floor.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong opposition to H.R. 497, a bill I consider reckless that endangers the health and well-being of Americans. With this legislation, House Republicans are putting politics over science. The legislation would eliminate the COVID-19 vaccine requirement for healthcare workers. It ignores the fact that vaccination of healthcare workers saves lives and protects the most vulnerable.

The bill has had no hearings, no markups, no opportunity to examine its impact on our healthcare system. It is what we call regular order. But I am not saying that it should have had hearings or markups in committee just for regular order. I believe that if Republicans had taken the time to solicit input on this bill, they would have heard from healthcare leaders that H.R. 497 will jeopardize the health and safety of providers, patients, and their families. That is why we have committee hearings. That is why we have committee markups, to hear and get input from our constituents.

COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective, and they have been essential to saving lives, rebuilding our economy, and protecting the health of our communities. More than 668 million

COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered here in the United States, which has resulted in 120 million fewer COVID-19 infections, 18.5 million fewer hospitalizations, and 3.2 million lives saved.

These vaccines are especially vital to protecting the most vulnerable in our community, including seniors, people with disabilities, and people living in nursing homes. The public health data clearly shows that increased vaccination in nursing homes has prevented additional hospitalizations and saved lives. New deaths among nursing home residents decreased by 83 percent once vaccination efforts began.

We also know that vaccination of healthcare providers has protected our healthcare workforce and saved lives by ensuring that patients can receive safe, essential, and timely care. Prior to the availability of COVID-19 vaccines, healthcare providers were at higher risk of becoming infected with COVID-19, endangering themselves and their families while leaving patients without access to care when they needed it most. That is why more than 50 healthcare organizations representing doctors, nurses, and hospitals, agree that requiring COVID-19 vaccination of healthcare workers saves lives and improves health outcomes.

My colleague from Indiana mentioned the U.S. Supreme Court. They actually upheld the vaccine mandate for healthcare workers.

Mr. Speaker, vaccines mandates are also not new. Healthcare workers are often required to receive vaccinations for a variety of infectious diseases. Many States have requirements that healthcare workers be vaccinated against communicable diseases like hepatitis, flu, and measles, mumps, or rubella.

Why wouldn't we want the same requirements to prevent the continued spread of COVID-19, especially amongst our most vulnerable?

Again, in response to my colleague from Indiana, the healthcare workforce has grown since the vaccine requirement, with more healthcare providers and staff employed, for example, on December 10, 2022, than prior to when the COVID-19 vaccine requirement went into effect. As of December 2022, employment in the healthcare sector was 1.2 percent higher than the previous peak of February 2020.

Data shows requiring COVID-19 vaccination of healthcare workers did not contribute to worsening of staffing shortages in nursing homes. Nursing homes who were experiencing staffing shortages prior to COVID- 19 had staffing levels remain stable after the COVID-19 vaccine requirement went into effect.

But I have to say, I was most disappointed yesterday. Yesterday, I was at the Rules Committee, last evening, where some of my Republican colleagues chose to ignore the broad-based scientific and medical consensus that the COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective at reducing deaths and hospitalizations. Instead, some of my Republican colleagues chose to spend their time entertaining fringe theories about vaccine side effects and propagating vaccine myths, despite the fact that millions of Americans have received the COVID-19 vaccine safely and with no effect on their health.

It is just truly disappointing to me that this is what we have come to in the United States Congress. The last thing that I want on either side of this aisle is for any of us to make statements on this floor-- and I know you are not saying that, my colleague from Indiana--but I am just so afraid that so much of this rhetoric, particularly last night in the Rules Committee, is giving the impression to the public that they shouldn't take the vaccine. If you listened to the Rules Committee last night and the Republican comments, you would have assumed that; you would suggest that. I think it is very dangerous. People should be taking the vaccine.

Finally, this legislation, I want to say, is also a distraction from Republicans' true agenda on healthcare, which they are continuing to work on behind closed doors, and that is to cut healthcare and retirement for millions of Americans. Republicans have repeatedly pledged that they will refuse to raise the debt limit unless they can cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other vital programs. They are so determined to cut Americans' healthcare that they are willing to recklessly risk defaulting on the national debt and wreaking havoc on the economy in order to do so.

If successful, their actions will result in millions of Americans losing benefits and lifesaving protections, including seniors, children with complex medical needs, people with disabilities, and pregnant and postpartum women. This is unconscionable.

I want to underscore that Democrats will not fall for this manufactured crisis, and we will not, under any circumstances, agree to cut these vital programs.

I hope I am wrong. I hope I won't see the other side moving toward these types of cuts. They are unacceptable to us.

I would just say, Democrats are committed to putting families first. We will continue to follow the science to fight COVID-19. We will build on the success of the most productive Democratic Congress in modern history and fight to ensure that Americans have access to affordable and quality healthcare, further lower healthcare, and prescription drug costs, and support our healthcare workforce.

This legislation is dangerous, and I strongly urge my colleagues to oppose it.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky), who is the

Ranking Member of our Subcommittee on Innovation, Data, and Commerce.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Castor), who is the ranking member of our Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Robert Garcia).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I want to correct certain things that are being said on the other side of the aisle.

First of all, the fact of the matter is that the healthcare workforce has grown since the vaccine requirement. There are more healthcare workers now than there were before.

The other thing I keep hearing from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle is that the COVID-19 vaccines do not help prevent infection from the disease. That is factually incorrect. Although breakthrough infections do occur, especially with more transmissible variants of the disease, COVID-19 vaccines still help in preventing infection and reduce transmission.

In fact, according to a study released just this month, it is confirmed that vaccinated individuals were likely to be less infectious than unvaccinated individuals, and the likelihood of transmission fell by 11 percent for each dose of the vaccine.

Moreover, we know that vaccination and continued upkeep with boosters continues to protect the public from infection. According to CDC, the most recent COVID-19 boosters cut the likelihood of infection by more than one-half in those who have gotten them.

As I hope none of us will dispute, even when there is breakthrough infection, vaccines are safe, effective, and dramatically reduce the length of illness. That matters for healthcare workers because we still have thousands of people hospitalized every day with COVID-19, cancer, and other grave illnesses, and without COVID-19 vaccines, we would have fewer people there to take care of them.

COVID-19 vaccines reduce infections, and they save lives. We can't let disinformation dictate our policy choices in this debate. We have to refer to the science.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Jacobs).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Again, I know that the previous speaker is a physician, and I respect her, but I have to continue to point out that this idea that vaccines don't help prevent infection from the disease is factually incorrect.

I mentioned before various studies, and I include in the Record a study by Berkeley Lovelace, Jr., that shows that the vaccine does cut the infection risk.

[From NBC News, Jan. 25, 2023]

Updated Covid Boosters Cut the Infection Risk From XBB.1.5 Subvariant

by Nearly Half, CDC Finds

(By Berkeley Lovelace Jr.)

The updated Covid boosters reduce the risk of Covid

infection from the predominant omicron subvariant by nearly

half, according to early data published Wednesday by the

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In adults up to age 49, the latest boosters from Pfizer-

BioNTech and Moderna were 48% effective against symptomatic

infection from the XBB.1.5 subvariant, the new report said.

As of Jan. 21, that subvariant accounted for about 1 in 2 new

cases in the U.S.

Protection was lower in older groups: The boosters were 40%

effective in adults ages 50 to 64 and 43% effective in people

65 and older.

The findings are ``quite reassuring,'' Dr. Brendan Jackson,

the head of the CDC's Covid response, said on a call with

reporters Wednesday. ``These updated vaccines are protecting

people against the latest Covid-19 variants.''

The Covid boosters were modified in the summer to target

the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron subvariants, in addition to the

original strain of the coronavirus first identified in Wuhan,

China, in 2019.

BA.5 was the dominant variant in the U.S. in the fall, but

now accounts for only 2% of new cases.

As of last Wednesday, only about 15% of people in the U.S.

had received an updated booster, according to CDC data.

``With this data, we see there is a benefit that might

convince some people to sign up and get a bivalent booster,''

said Dr. Peter Hotez, the co-director of the Center for

Vaccine Development at Texas Children's Hospital and the dean

of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor

College of Medicine in Houston.

The CDC report is based on test results from more than

29,100 adults with Covid symptoms who were tested at

pharmacies nationwide from Dec. 1 through Jan. 13.

People who were vaccinated but had not received the updated

booster were compared to those who got the updated booster in

the previous two to three months. Those who hadn't received

the updated booster had their last vaccine dose about 13

months ago, Ruth Link-Gelles, who heads the CDC's vaccine

effectiveness program, said on the call.

The protection provided by the booster is on par with

what's typically seen with the flu vaccine. Flu vaccine

effectiveness varies

from season to season, but the shots reduce the risk of the

flu by 40% to 60%, according to the CDC.

Dr. Greg Poland, the director of the Mayo Clinic Vaccine

Research Group in Rochester, Minnesota, cautioned that the

CDC's estimate on the updated boosters may be an

overestimate.

People who got the updated boosters are probably ``much

more likely to wear masks indoors or restrain their travel or

not go to indoor restaurants,'' he said.

He also pointed out that the CDC data doesn't capture

people who were vaccinated with the updated booster but were

asymptomatic, or people who were sick enough that they went

to the hospital.

Hotez said that while the CDC's findings appear promising,

he'd like to see data on how well the boosters perform

against symptomatic infections after five or six months.

He said he'd also like to see more data on how well the

updated boosters work against hospitalization.

Jackson, of the CDC, said on the call that the agency is

releasing data later Wednesday that found the updated

boosters reduced the risk of death from Covid by nearly

thirteenfold, compared to people who are unvaccinated.

The data, he said, also found that people who got the

updated booster had more than twofold lower rates of death

from Covid compared to vaccinated people who did not get it.

The CDC's report comes a day before a meeting of the Food

and Drug Administration's advisory committee that will

discuss simplifying the Covid vaccination schedule.

In a document posted online Monday, the FDA proposed using

the bivalent formula in all Covid vaccines moving forward,

not just for booster shots.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record an article from the University of California San Francisco regarding COVID-19 vaccines reducing transmission.

[From the University of California San Francisco, Jan. 2, 2023]

Covid-19 Vaccines, Prior Infection Reduce Transmission of Omicron

(By Laura Kurtzman)

Vaccination and boosting, especially when recent, helped to

limit the spread of COVID-19 in California prisons during the

first Omicron wave, according to an analysis by researchers

at UC San Francisco that examined transmission between people

living in the same cell.

The study demonstrates the benefits of vaccination and

boosting, even in settings where many people are still

getting infected, in reducing transmission. And it shows the

cumulative effects from boosting and the additional

protection that vaccination gives to those who were

previously infected. The likelihood of transmission fell by

11% for each additional dose.

vaccines reduce risk of serious illness from omicron infection

In dense populations such as prisons, vaccines were shown

to significantly reduce the risk of hospitalization and death

from Omicron infections.

Of over 20,000 confirmed Omicron infections in California

prisons, there were 31 hospitalizations and no deaths

attributed to COVID-19 infection.

Vaccinated residents with breakthrough infections were

significantly less likely to transmit them: 28% versus 36%

for those who were unvaccinated.

``A lot of the benefits of vaccines to reduce

infectiousness were from people who had received boosters and

people who had been recently vaccinated,'' said Nathan Lo,

M.D., Ph.D, a faculty research fellow in the Division of HIV,

Infectious Diseases and Global Medicine at UCSF and the

senior author of the study, published Jan. 2, 2022, in Nature

Medicine. ``Our findings are particularly relevant to

improving health for the incarcerated population.''

The researchers analyzed deidentified data collected by the

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation

(CDCR). This included COVID-19 test results, vaccine status

and housing locations for 111,687 residents, 97% of whom were

male, between Dec. 15, 2021, and May 20, 2022.

Breakthrough infections were common, despite the residents'

relatively high vaccination rate of 81% with the primary

vaccine series. But the rate of serious illness was low. In

just over five months, there were 22,334 confirmed SARS-CoV-2

Omicron infections, 31 hospitalizations and no COVID-19

deaths.

Vaccinated residents with breakthrough infections were

significantly less likely to transmit them: 28% versus 36%

for those who were unvaccinated. But the likelihood of

transmission grew by 6% for every five weeks that passed

since someone's last vaccine shot.

Natural immunity from a prior infection also had a

protective effect, and the risk of transmitting the virus was

23% for someone with a reinfection compared to 33% for

someone who had never been infected:

``A lot of the benefits of vaccines to reduce

infectiousness were from people who had received boosters and

people who had been recently vaccinated.''--Nathan Lo, M.D.,

Ph.D

Those with hybrid immunity, from both infection and

vaccination, were 40% less likely to transmit the virus. Half

of that protection came from the immunity that one acquires

from fighting an infection and the other half came from being

vaccinated.

The researchers said they were gratified to see that

vaccination confers addition protection even for those who

had already been infected, but they were surprised by how

much the infection continued to spread, despite the

residents' relatively high vaccination rates.

``Regardless of the benefits you see in vaccination and

prior infection, there is still a high amount of transmission

in this study,'' said Sophia Tan, a researcher in Lo's lab

and the study's first author. ``We hope these findings can

support ongoing efforts to protect this vulnerable

population.''

This includes making efforts to keep residents current with

boosters and increasing the vaccination rate of the prison

staff, only 73 percent of whom had received the primary

series at the time of the study.

The general rate of boosting could also be improved

significantly. At the time of the study, just 59% of

residents and 41% of staff had received all the doses

recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention (CDC), based on their age and health status.

``Within the two months following vaccination, people are

the least infectious, which indicates that boosters and large

timed vaccination campaigns may have a role to reduce

transmission in surges,'' Lo said. ``New ideas are needed

since the risk of infection in this vulnerable population

remains so great.''

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time because I believe the other side has more speakers.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, one of the things that hasn't come up, and it didn't come up in Rules last night as well, we have exemptions for this mandate for people who have serious religious convictions or medical reasons to grant an exemption. No one has mentioned that, but I think it is important that that exists.

The mandate exists, but at the same time, if people have serious religious reservations or they have medical conditions that would result in having an exemption, those do exist. I think everyone should understand that.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman has additional speakers, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I stress again that for people who have serious religious reservations, for people who have medical conditions, they can get exemptions from the mandate.

In addition to that, I know that the previous gentleman on the Republican side talked about risks and side effects. The FDA and CDC have been transparent that there are rare side effects that may happen to some individuals when they take the vaccines, but they and independent health experts all agree that the benefits of being vaccinated far outweigh the risks of any side effects.

Arguments from the other side of the aisle insinuating an inflated risk of side effects also ignore the risks associated with contracting COVID-19 as an unvaccinated individual. COVID-19 is a dangerous disease that has killed over a million of our fellow Americans, and the vaccines are safe and effective. They are strongly protective against severe illness and death.

Mr. Speaker, I am very concerned that some Members use their opportunity to speak on the floor--and I am not saying that the people who spoke here have, but last night I certainly heard it in the Rules Committee--to fan the flames of misinformation when describing the risks of side effects when the risks of being unvaccinated are so grave.

I just think that this is dangerous and opposed by virtually every public health and medical organization. They are saying that they recommend the vaccine. Again, there may be some rare side effects. There may be some people that, you know, would seek to have exemptions. Let's try to understand that this is often a difficult situation, but the bottom line is that vaccines have saved millions of lives, and we can't give the impression that that is not the case.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to close.

Mr. Speaker, I am just so concerned that we are seeing another example here on the floor today of what I call Republican extremism. Republicans are keeping up their commitment to extremism, in my opinion, by attempting to eliminate the COVID-19 vaccine requirement for healthcare workers.

Mr. Speaker, this is really dangerous legislation that is going to strain our healthcare system, exacerbate existing staffing shortages, and further limit American families' access to healthcare.

With H.R. 497, the Republicans are really putting politics over science. Democrats are committed to putting families first, where we can continue to follow the science to fight COVID-19. We are going to build on the success. We had a lot of success in the previous Congress in so many things to make sure that Americans have access to affordable and quality healthcare, to further lower healthcare costs and prescription drug costs, and to support our healthcare workforce.

Everything that we do here should be designed to not only prevent infection but prepare for future types of pandemics. I am just so concerned because I listened last night at Rules and here on the floor, and I just think that the impression is being given somehow that maybe people shouldn't take vaccines or that there are risks to vaccines that, in my opinion, are being stated that are way out of proportion or that somehow there is significant evidence out there that it doesn't matter if you get vaccinated or not because that is not going to cause more infection.

The bottom line is that this mandate was put in place for healthcare workers because the agencies involved that studied the science at the Federal level believed that it was going to be a good thing for the healthcare workers themselves, that they wouldn't get ill and die, that it would help in preventing the spread of COVID-19, and that it would give people a sense of security knowing that the people that are helping them when they are sick have also been vaccinated.

I just don't understand why all of a sudden now the Republicans say: Well, that is not really accurate. Let all the healthcare workers do whatever they want.

It makes no sense. I just think it is politically motivated, if you will, because they have certain people, I guess, their base voters, who are anti-vaccination. But you can't be anti-vaccination if you look at the science and what has been done with these vaccinations that saved so many lives, to make it so that now the situation with COVID-19 is much better than it has been in the last few years, which is why the President is saying that he can lift the healthcare emergency.

We have made a lot of progress. We have made a lot of progress because we have based our actions on science. To suggest today that we should eliminate this mandate, I think is very dangerous.

Mr. Speaker, I strongly urge my colleagues to oppose it, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

We strongly oppose this bill, which is an assault on all the progress we have made over the last several years in telework policy. Telework has strengthened private and public workplaces across the land, enhanced productivity, increased efficiency, improved the morale and satisfaction of the workforce, reduced traffic congestion, and made positive environmental changes.

When the chairman says it is time to return to work, I believe this is a misnomer because people who participate in telework are working. They are already working, and so they don't need to return to work.

This bill would take a sledgehammer to Federal telework policy and law, which the sponsors seem completely oblivious to, and you can hardly blame them because the leadership brings this measure forward without the benefit of even a single hearing in the Oversight Committee, which means Congress has not heard from the Office of Personnel Management or any of the Federal agency chiefs, and it has not heard from any Federal workers or their collective bargaining representatives. It hasn't heard from any of the stakeholders other than secondhand, I guess,

through hearsay the Mayor of Washington, D.C., who not surprisingly seems to be resistant, at least according to that report, to telework policy.

This is an arbitrary effort to roll back all of the progress that has been made under legislation and administrative rules over the last decade without any participation at all of the key stakeholders.

The bill falsely equates the development of telework as part of a balanced Federal workplace policy by OPM and the agencies with the sudden and near complete shift to virtual work in certain sectors because of the pandemic. Those are two completely different things.

This conflation produces nothing but confusion, and the bill is a wrecking ball against telework policy, which has been a critical success in so many workplaces.

Colleagues, the workplace is changing because of extraordinary new technology and a new focus on productivity and efficiency as opposed to industrial-age assembly-line seating and command-and-control work relations.

Before the pandemic, hybrid and remote work were already growing far more prevalent across professions, particularly for jobs performed in an office setting. The pandemic accelerated these dynamics not only in the Federal workplace but even more dramatically in the private sector.

From fiscal year 2019 to 2020, as we entered the pandemic, Federal telework doubled from roughly 500,000 people to more than a million. Practically overnight, traditional barriers to telework, such as technological obstacles and management resistance, began to disappear. Federal agencies implemented sweeping new guidelines as an essential tool for the continuity of government operations.

The pandemic, of course, will not last forever. Indeed, the President announced that he plans to end the public health emergency on May 11. The Federal Government will not maintain a pandemic-level telework posture in perpetuity, but we cannot ignore the lessons that we have learned over the last several years.

As OPM put it in its 2021 annual report on the status of telework, ``there is no going back.'' Enhanced demand in the national workforce and among Federal employees will continue as workers and supervisors report greatly enhanced productivity and focus from flexible work practices that reduce time wasted in endless in-person meetings, watercooler gossip sessions, and the proverbial BS sessions that overcome so many people's offices.

According to a survey by The Conference Board, 82 percent of companies are going to offer hybrid work options to employees going forward, and the number of private companies willing to let at least some portion of their workforce go fully remote has tripled to an astonishing 36 percent.

In another survey, 63 percent of employees rated the value of 2 to 3 days being able to work from home as equivalent to a pay raise.

To remain competitive with the private sector with which we compete, the Federal Government must offer reasonable telework options. OPM says it will, observing that we must appreciate the sea change in the American labor market.

Telework saves money, helps the government recruit top talent, reduces traffic gridlock, makes environmental sense, and ensures a continuity of operations at agencies that Americans rely on every single day. It is a lifeline for people who have disabilities or are immunocompromised, and it offers dramatically expanded opportunities for people living in more rural areas to enter and sustain a career in the Federal service.

We cannot enter a time machine and simply wish away the utility of telework in recruiting and retaining new generations of Federal workers. We should embrace telework as part of a balanced workplace policy to promote employee satisfaction and overall mission outcome.

OPM Director Kiran Ahuja offers a clear-eyed vision for the future in her annual report saying, ``Federal agencies must continue to embrace workplace flexibilities, such as telework, to remain competitive for top talent. Decisions about telework, however, must be driven by delivery of mission. We all work for the American public, and how we best serve them needs to be the paramount consideration.''

That means telework does not make sense for every worker in every office or every activity. If you are guarding the Capitol, obviously you need to be present. If you are researching groups that were involved in the insurrection against the Capitol, you might be able to work part of that time virtually. Processing paper tax returns at the IRS may indeed require in-person work.

I will note that although people are blaming the problems with IRS responsiveness on telework, that does not make sense to me. Telephone work is something that can be done from the office, home office, or somewhere else, which is why we have been, on our side of the aisle, invested in increasing staff at the IRS because our constituents are so frustrated with being left on the phone and not getting answers returned about when they will be getting their IRS refund.

In the Inflation Reduction Act, we added 5,000 new positions for people on the phones to respond to our constituents. I know that some of our colleagues across the aisle have opposed additional funding for IRS positions, and that is surely a far more likely culprit than whatever telework policies are in place over at the IRS.

The Biden administration's telework guidance seeks to strike a balance between getting people who need to be in person back in the office safely and helping agencies design their post-pandemic telework plans to build off the prior successes of this policy.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I will tell you a story about a couple that both work for the Federal Government. Earlier this month, the spouse of an Army servicemember, seeking approval to go work overseas for the State Department, contacted the Oversight Committee because she was being forced to decide between quitting her very successful Federal career for the State Department or returning to Washington, D.C., to continue her Federal service without her husband and her two children.

Her agency was fighting desperately to maintain her expertise and was perfectly fine with her performing her duties from overseas with her husband, who is in the Army who was being relocated over there.

Luckily, we were able to help make sure that her overseas telework request was approved.

Now, is that someone who is not really working? Do we want to tell her to get back to work?

Her situation is common for thousands of families in the Federal workforce where you have one member who is in the military who is being relocated, the other who might be working at a site in Washington who is now able to work out the terms of service under the telework policy, but that is precisely an element of the policy that will be crushed by the legislation that has been brought forward without the benefit of a single hearing in the Oversight and Accountability Committee.

Despite the fact that our colleagues have said that they will only bring legislation to the floor after there has been a hearing--and we are just a few weeks into the session--this legislation comes forward without hearing from anybody like this constituent who was being put in such a tough posture or the Directors of the agencies or the head of the Office of Personnel Management who is in charge of actually supervising and coordinating overall telework policy and making the annual report to Congress.

Telework is a vital tool for the government to recruit and retain and grow the talented workforce we need to make the Federal Government work. It ensures that Federal workers can serve the Nation even during disasters. Again, it was the preexisting telework policy that established the infrastructure that made for such a relatively smooth transition when we got into the pandemic.

I have to say that denials of telework for the spouses of military personnel are still common, and they are consequential, and they would be pervasive if the legislation passed. I hope that all our colleagues will reject this and at the very least send it back to the Oversight Committee for some real hearings so we can talk about what this really means.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to address two points. One, let's grab the bull by the horns with this IRS point. The President's budget included $80 billion to increase staffing and to update technology at the IRS so our constituents can get their calls returned. If you are waiting for your IRS tax refund, that is something that you have planned on. That is part of your family budget. If it is stuck somehow, it is extremely frustrating for people not to be able to get through.

Now they, bizarrely to my mind, blame telework for this, and they oppose the $80 billion. I think they say that will create 75,000 or 100,000 new IRS agents who will be chasing working-class people around the country.

On the contrary, we have a report showing the $80 billion will produce $200 billion in new revenue and it is rich people who are the ones who are being protected by the refusal of my colleagues to invest in the IRS.

Telework is a complete distraction. It is an absolute red herring. It has nothing to do with whether or not you want to invest in the IRS or not.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Mfume), my colleague.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, they complain about delays at the IRS and then they oppose funding to assist the overwhelmed workforce at the IRS, which is staggering under the weight of all of these obligations.

This is the first time I have heard that telework was the source of the problem, but apparently, that is what it is this week. Of course, we haven't had a real hearing so we have had no witnesses on it; somebody has apparently just dreamed that up.

It has just been linked to the debt ceiling. Interesting that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle has voted to lift the debt ceiling three different times under Donald Trump, who increased the debt of the United States single-handedly by more than 20 percent. All of the debt of the United States under one President. More than 20 percent.

Mr. Speaker, let's get back to the issue at hand.

Members of Congress make very strange opponents of telework policy, not because we don't work hard, because I think we do work hard, but we use telework all the time.

Members of Congress might be in their district office working. They might be at a town hall meeting working. They might be here on the floor. They might be in a committee meeting, a subcommittee meeting. They might be meeting with constituents somewhere else.

And I dare say the vast majority, if not all of us, engage in telework. We wouldn't say to them, ``Get back to work and stop teleworking.'' We understand that that is part of an overall telework policy.

If people have employees who they think are abusing telework, well, they have got a problem with that employee or they have a problem with their supervisor. But to my experience and knowledge, as someone who, I admit, may have been a little curmudgeonly, in the way we are hearing some of the Members are today, when the COVID-19 crisis started, the employees who are super productive at work will be super productive at home.

In my case, that is almost all of them. In fact, I think it is all of them. If you have an employee who blows off their assignments at work and doesn't turn them in, they will do the same thing if they are working from home. That is a question of supervision. The real issue is, why all of a sudden they want to turn against a decade of progress on telework policy and start affixing to it all of these other problems.

For that, I don't understand, other than people seem to want to blame the Federal workers for everything. Those workers belong to all of our districts. They are all across the country. Eighty percent of Federal workers are not in Washington, D.C., Maryland, or Virginia. They are all over the country, working everywhere from military bases to Indian reservations to public health service. You name it.

These are our people. These are American citizens, and they deserve something a lot more than the implied contempt of suggesting that if they use telework, they are not really working.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Connolly).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Virginia.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The gentlewoman makes an interesting argument. Of course, if physical presence in Washington is necessary, then that agency never should have been stripped from Washington and relocated in Colorado in the first place.

One could say that entire workforce is calling in or not really working because the entire office has a telework policy.

Obviously, she has carved out an exception for that. She thinks they can be effective, even though they are not in Washington, D.C.

Look, Mr. Speaker, this has been not just a closed rule but a closed process. There was no hearing in the Oversight and Accountability Committee. Despite the fact that those hearings have been promised, there has been no hearing about it.

Let me tell you one of the things we would learn if we actually had a hearing about it. The bill contemplates rolling the clock back to 2019 for every Federal agency. Well, what would that mean for one small agency, the Federal Communications Commission, which has decided upon a plan to reduce its leased office space with a savings of

$119 million precisely because of the existence of telework, saying we don't need all that space?

Now, since we rolled the clock back and presumptively say you can't do that, we are going to be costing the taxpayers $119 million a year because they have to go back to their prepandemic plan simply because we have this one-size-fits-all, categorical, cookie-cutter approach undertaken without any hearings.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office similarly would be forced to abandon its $12.5 million a year in savings in leasing costs made possible because of reduced consumption of office space by telework.

Do we really want to say that we hate telework so much, that we distrust our own workers so much, even though the studies show that it is yielding benefits in office productivity, that we are going to force the taxpayers to pay more money for more expensive office space in downtown Washington, D.C.?

We haven't even looked at the question because there was no hearing because there was just a rush to get this to the floor so we could tell workers who are already at work to get back to work.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, some of my colleagues seem to betray no understanding at all of what Federal telework policy is.

To say that the workforce is not going to the office and it is time to get back to work simply suggests they don't know that every agency, every commission, every department makes its own decisions about this as part of the complete workplace policy, going job classification by job classification, defining when it makes sense and when it doesn't make sense.

That is the way that it works, but they want to have a broad-brush, one-size-fits-all, straitjacket policy where they just decapitate a decade of progress, using the pandemic or the end of the pandemic as the excuse for doing that.

To repeat: This is not a Washington problem. The vast majority of the Federal workforce is spread out across the country.

The hardworking people we see in front of us today who work for the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives and for the House are just a small example of the workforce located in Washington, which is a tiny minority of the Federal workforce which is all over America.

That flexibility has been given to Federal workforce supervisors all over the country to deal with. They would clearly try to elevate what I think is a frivolous talking point over the cost savings that have been created because of telework policies. They would elevate it over the increased job performance and job satisfaction that is being demonstrated in studies around the country. They would elevate it over the clear success of telework within the private sector.

Oftentimes, my colleagues will say we have to be more like the private sector. It is the private sector that has been leading the way here. The Federal workforce has been very much in the rear guard doing it.

In any event, remember that they are conflating two completely different things. One is the Federal telework policy that has evolved over the last decade, and the other is the pandemic.

It is true that the pandemic response was made far more efficient because there was an infrastructure in place in order to make telework possible. Those pandemic policies can be reversed without destroying all the policies that have developed over the last decade.

There are an incredible number of unintended consequences that are exacerbated by the fact we have not had a single hearing on this question, which is of fundamental importance to hundreds of thousands and millions of people across the country.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

The title of this bill, the SHOW UP Act, consists of the Stopping Home Office Work's Unproductive Problems Act. I understand that in Washington--this really is a Washington problem--there is always a search for the perfect acronym over the actual meaning of the language, but this title does some real violence to the English language.

I don't know what an ``unproductive problem'' is. I certainly don't know what a ``productive problem'' is. I wonder whether the person who wrote that was working on telework or wrote it at the office. To me, it makes no difference. Somebody should have said that doesn't really make any sense for a title for Federal legislation.

In any event, the point is that Members of Congress, as everyone should know, are able to be very effective, often being in two places at the same time. You might be at your district office, or you might be at a townhall meeting in your district, but you call into a meeting with your chief of staff and your legislative staff, or you call in to have a meeting with subcommittee staff or what have you. I don't understand the sudden effort to demonize technology and all the advances that we have made.

I don't take this to be serious legislation. There was no hearing on it. There seems to be no effort to convince anyone that it is serious. I hope we can do better in the days ahead.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 75, I call up the bill (H.R. 497) to eliminate the COVID-19 vaccine mandate on health care providers furnishing items and services under certain Federal health care programs, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks on the legislation and to insert extraneous material on H.R. 497.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 497, the Freedom for Health Care Workers Act, introduced by my Energy and Commerce Committee colleague Representative Duncan.

I want to start by making one thing clear: I believe in the safety and effectiveness of vaccines. I am a physician. I am pro-vaccine. At the same time, I am conservative, and I believe in individual choice. It is my firm conviction that, whenever possible, the Federal Government should leave decisionmaking to State or local authorities.

Additionally, my background in medicine has informed my belief that medical decisions are extremely personal and should be made by individuals in consultation with their doctors.

So, at the end of 2021, when the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced a decision to mandate that healthcare workers receive a COVID-19 vaccine to remain employed, I opposed the decision. I believed this move by the Biden administration to be unnecessary, inappropriate, and a net harm to our healthcare system as a whole.

That is why my colleague Vern Buchanan and I led a letter with 113 other Members outlining our opposition to the mandate and our concerns.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record that letter in opposition to the mandate.

Congres of the United States,

House of Representatives,

Washington, DC, December 6, 2021.

Hon. Chiquita Brooks-LaSure,

Administrator, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services,

Baltimore, MD.

Dear Administrator Brooks-LaSure: The COVID-19 pandemic has

taken a significant toll on the American public both

physically and emotionally for almost two years. In that

time, though, multiple vaccines have become widely available

for those wishing to

be vaccinated. According to the Mayo Clinic, nearly 60

percent of the United States population over the age of 12 is

fully vaccinated, including over 83 percent of the Medicare-

aged population.

Thankfully, the United States has seen an overall decrease

in new COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths since

vaccines became readily available, and while we are not yet

out of the woods, many are saying the end of the pandemic is

in sight. Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner

Scott Gottlieb, M.D. recently stated the pandemic ``may well

be over'' by January 4, which is the deadline the Centers for

Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) set for complying with

either its vaccination mandate or enforcing the continued use

of masks and weekly testing.

At a time when we are facing a growing health care

workforce shortage--including a projected physician shortage

of more than 100,000 by 2034--implementing a federal vaccine

mandate will only serve to exacerbate the problem. By your

own admission, ``[t]hese requirements will apply to

approximately 76,000 providers and cover over 17 million

health care workers across the country.'' It is difficult, if

not impossible, to reconcile the rationale for implementing a

mandate like this at the tail end of the pandemic while we,

as a nation, are struggling to staff hospitals, physician

offices and other ancillary providers.

We fully support your agency's goal of ``[e]nsuring patient

safety and protection,'' but if seniors are unable to access

care because their provider no longer participates in the

Medicare program, this rule will undermine its stated goal.

By subjecting providers to egregious federal overreach, our

nation's most vulnerable populations will be at risk and

America's seniors will bear the brunt of any provider loss

due to non-compliance with this heavy-handed and

constitutionally dubious vaccine mandate. Americans are

quitting their jobs at a record pace, and this new federal

mandate will only make matters worse and keep more Americans

out of the workforce.

There are over 54 million Medicare-aged Americans, and it

is our duty as Members of Congress representing those seniors

to ensure they maintain access to their preferred health care

provider. This is especially true when that means opposing an

administrative agency's actions that will lead to fewer

options for our constituents; longer wait times; and the

inevitability of adverse health outcomes due to fewer

available providers.

We strongly urge you to abandon implementing this onerous

new rule and instead heed current statistics that show

seniors are vaccinated at a higher rate than the rest of the

population of vaccinated Americans while also uniquely

vulnerable to disruptions in the health care system and

consider the potentially negative consequences this mandate

will have on the size and strength of our health care

workforce. To truly ensure patient safety and protection, we

must preserve Americans' access to their preferred providers

rather than impose a new one-size-fits-all federal mandate on

our nation's health care providers at a time when they can

least afford it.

Sincerely,

Vern Buchanan, Elise Stefanik, Jeff Duncan, Jodey V.

Arrington, Mike Kelly, Larry Bucshon, M.D., Jim Banks, Brett

Guthrie, Jackie Walorski, David B. McKinley, P.E., Gus M.

Bilirakis, Bill Johnson, Debbie Lesko, Dan Crenshaw, Bill

Posey, Bob Gibbs, Ralph Norman, John Joyce, M.D., Markwayne

Mullin, Earl L. ``Buddy'' Carter, Michael Waltz, Doug

Lamborn, Randy Feenstra, Neal P. Dunn, M.D., Brian Mast,

Robert E. Latta.

Guy Reschenthaler, Kelly Armstrong, William Timmons,

Gregory F. Murphy, M.D., Mike Johnson, Beth Van Duyne, Darin

LaHood, Warren Davidson, Brian Babin, D.D.S., Brad R.

Wenstrup, D.P.M., Glen Grothman, John H. Rutherford, Adrian

Smith, Fred Keller, Jack Bergman, Michelle Steel, Kevin Hern,

Dan Newhouse, Michael Cloud, Troy Balderson, A. Drew

Ferguson, IV, D.M.D., John Moolenaar, Tim Burchett, C. Scott

Franklin, Barry Moore, Tom McClintock, Eric A. ``Rick''

Crawford, Ronny L. Jackson, M.D., Jody Hice, Diana

Harshbarger, Parm.D., Jason Smith, Tom Rice.

Tom Reed, Carlos Gimenez, Pete Sessions, Greg Pence, Ben

Cline, Glenn ``GT'' Thompson, Mariannette J. Miller-Meeks,

M.D., Claudia Tenney, Mike Rogers, Ron Estes, Ted Budd, Andy

Harris, M.D., David Kustoff, Steve Chabot, Michael Guest, W.

Gregory Steube, Randy K. Weber, Majorie Taylor Green, Lance

Gooden, Pat Fallon, Michael C. Burgess, M.D., Kat Cammack,

Andy Biggs, Carol D. Miller, Andrew S. Clyde, Devin Nunes,

Stephanie Bice, Tracey Mann, Daniel Webster, Mary Miller,

Darrell Issa, Rodney Davis.

Lisa McClain, Richard Hudson, Ann Wagner, Mario Diaz-

Balart, Lloyd Smucker, Jeff Fortenberry, Dan Bishop, Jim

Baird, John Rose, Louie Gohmert, David Schweikert, Rick W.

Allen, Bill Huizenga, Bryon Donalds, Bruce Westerman, Andrew

R. Garbarino, Nancy Mace, Vicky Hartzler, Steven M. Palazzo,

Jake LaTurner, Chuck Fleischmann, Tom Emmer, Austin Scott,

Trey Hollingsworth, Mike Bost.

The move was unprecedented. CMS does not impose such a mandate for any other vaccine. Furthermore, the vaccine, while effective at preventing severe disease and death, is not shown to totally prevent transmission of the virus.

It was difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile the rationale for implementing a mandate like this at the tail end of the pandemic while we as a Nation are struggling to staff hospitals, physician offices, and other ancillary providers.

Our Nation's healthcare system was already facing a growing healthcare workforce shortage, including a projected physician shortage of more than 100,000 by 2034. I was worried--and, indeed, we saw it play out--that implementing a Federal vaccine mandate would only serve to exacerbate the problem.

For example, in my home State, Indiana University lost 125 employees as a direct result of the vaccine requirement, and that is just one small example. Thousands of individuals across the country either resigned or were let go due to this mandate.

Now, over a year later, despite several lawsuits rising through the courts questioning the validity of this exact rule, the Biden administration continues to enforce this mandate.

Today's bill does what the Biden administration will not. It ends the onerous mandate imposed by a Federal Government agency on the American people. It provides important autonomy to healthcare workers and critical relief to hospitals and other facilities that continue to face staff shortages.

My Democratic colleagues will say that this mandate was worth it, that repealing it will hurt healthcare workers or patients they serve. I haven't seen any data to suggest that.

What we do know is that 95 percent of Americans have either been vaccinated or had COVID-19. We know the vaccine no longer totally prevents transmission of COVID-19.

CMS' vaccine mandate won't end with the public health emergency on May 11 or sooner if the previous bill that we just debated goes into law. It will go on indefinitely unless the administration rescinds it or Congress takes action.

Given that the administration threatened to veto this legislation, it doesn't seem like they plan to reverse course, so Congress must step in.

We are not taking away anyone's ability to get vaccinated. Healthcare workers can and should protect themselves, including getting vaccinated if they choose. Nor are we taking away the ability of individual health systems to make decisions about what vaccinations they may require.

For instance, many healthcare systems have required employees to get a flu shot for many years. The Federal Government simply shouldn't demand they do so.

Federal bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., do not know the needs of Hoosiers in my district or many Americans across the country and must not be allowed to make medical decisions on their behalf.

Mr. Speaker, for all of these reasons, I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 497 here today, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to remind everyone that I am a physician, and I support vaccination. I just don't support the Federal Government mandating it. If local facilities want to mandate vaccination, that is up to them. I just don't believe the Federal Government at CMS should do it. Also, in recent history, the only ones who have cut Medicare are the administration and the Democrats, not Republicans.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Duncan), the primary sponsor of the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to remind everyone that CMS doesn't mandate any other vaccine, and this also doesn't preclude local hospital systems, local governments, or State governments from mandating a vaccine.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Guthrie), the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health.

Mr. Speaker, I support vaccination of healthcare workers. I just don't think that CMS should be mandating it nationally.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Carter), a pharmacist.

Mr. Speaker, no one is endangered by this legislation. As I have said before, it doesn't prevent healthcare facilities from requiring a COVID vaccine for their employees.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Pfluger).

Mr. Speaker, CMS mandates one vaccine, COVID-19. They don't mandate any other vaccines. That doesn't mean healthcare workers don't get the COVID-19 vaccine.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Washington (Mrs. Rodgers), the chairwoman of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Mr. Speaker, viral diseases like measles have been around for centuries. COVID-19 likely will also be persistent.

So, when do my Democratic colleagues propose that this Federal mandate end? I propose that we pass this legislation and end it.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Cammack).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Iowa (Mrs. Miller-Meeks), who is a physician.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 15 seconds to the gentlewoman from Iowa.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Georgia (Ms. Greene).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Alford).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Van Duyne).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Murphy), who is a physician.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time remains on each side?

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I say again that I am a physician. I was a practicing physician for 15 years before I came into Congress. I am pro-vaccine. I believe that the COVID-19 vaccine saves lives and prevents serious illness. I have been vaccinated myself and boosted. My family has taken the vaccines.

That is not what this is about, Mr. Speaker. What this is about is a Federal mandate to force medical decisions on individual American citizens.

Again, it also doesn't stop local hospitals, like my hospitals in Evansville, Indiana, from requiring the COVID-19 vaccine for their employees. I think we have a disconnect here about what this legislation is actually about. It is actually about Federal control at CMS. Again, CMS has only mandated one vaccine, and that is the COVID-19 vaccine.

Mr. Speaker, I agree with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that vaccines save lives, but I also think it should be a personal choice, and that is what this is about. We need to get past this because, as I mentioned earlier, other viral diseases like the measles have been around literally for centuries--centuries--so when does a Federal vaccine mandate for COVID-19 end?

When do we come to an end point, say, okay, the risk is so low that we are not going to mandate from CMS that you get a medical treatment that you may not want or you lose your job?

Now, again, I reiterate, if your local hospital or medical facility says, look, this is part of our employment requirement, okay, that is up to them, but not the Federal Government.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Allen).

Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reiterate again that as a physician, I support vaccination for healthcare workers if they choose to do so or if their local medical facility says it is a requirement for them to be employed at that facility. I just don't support the Federal Government mandating it nationwide because they don't mandate any other vaccine, and they never have that I am aware of.

So there are all kinds of other things in medicine that I wish people would do:

I wish people would get screened for colon cancer.

I wish people would get their mammograms.

I wish people would get their pap smears.

I wish people would get their prostates checked.

The reality is it is a free country. We are not going to mandate all of those things, are we?

We could, I guess.

This is just another medical treatment that people should have the freedom to choose. The Federal Government shouldn't be mandating it.

Again, I can't be more clear, and other doctors that have spoken today have said, ``we believe in vaccinations.'' In fact, we did public service announcements supporting it. We just don't believe that CMS should be mandating this for healthcare workers, and that this mandate should end.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to support H.R. 497, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, Mr. Raskin, for yielding this time.

A couple quick things. H.R. 139 is an overly broad proposal that stretches across the entirety of the Federal Government workplace to say that each and every telework policy, practice, and procedure implemented in response to the global health crisis must end immediately in 30 days because a majority of the House of Representatives says so.

Well, let's remember that in the word ``telework,'' the last four letters are w-o-r-k. People who telework are working. They are working day in and day out. And they have been working through the crisis, working to get us back to where we need to be.

The bill says that the rest of America must then take time to study the majority of our edict today to see if it made sense in the first place.

Now, if that is not a classic case of putting the cart before the horse or the tail wagging the dog, I don't know. I do know that this is not how a deliberative body, particularly this Chamber, should operate. We should at least have a hearing on this, bring in the proper agencies, review this in a real sort of way, and then figure out what we do. To act this way creates a real problem. The solution, I think, is looking for a problem, and this is not the place it ought to be.

We have not talked with OPM. We have not talked with Federal agencies. We have really not talked with the IRS. We just condemn them. You have to remember, the 5,000 IRS agents we were trying to put in place on this side of the aisle were to augment what they were doing. The IRS has been slow in terms of responding. This was an effort to speed that up.

Mr. Speaker, the distinguished gentleman from Kentucky's First District, Mr. Comer, and I, I think, want to get to one thing, and that is the idea of greater productivity, but I would ask that we think about another way to try to do this.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a Department of Defense Inspector General report dated March 30, 2021. The full report can be found at: https://www.dodig.mil/reports.html/Article/2557812/ evaluation-of-access-to-department-of-defense-information-technology- and-commun/.

[March 30, 2021]

Results in Brief--Evaluation of Access to Department of Defense

Information Technology and Communications During the Coronavirus

Disease-2019 Pandemic

Objective

The objective of this evaluation was to determine the

extent to which DoD Components provided access to DoD

information technology and communications during the

coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) Pandemic.

Background

In May 2006, the President issued the National Strategy for

Pandemic Influenza Implementation Plan that requires Federal

agencies to develop plans to maintain information technology

and communications systems to continue operations during a

pandemic. In response, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for

Homeland Defense and Global Security (ASD[HD&GS]) issued the

DoD Implementation Plan for Pandemic Influenza (DoD

Implementation Plan) in August 2006 to ensure the continuity

of essential functions in the event of a pandemic. The DoD

Implementation Plan states that during a pandemic, special

consideration must be given to social distancing in the

workplace through teleworking. DoD Components' pandemic plans

should include the use of laptops, high-speed

telecommunications links, and other systems that enable

personnel to perform essential functions while teleworking.

The plans should also include the requirement to test

telework procedures, the impact of Government-wide mandated

telework on internal networks, and backup plans for

communications infrastructure.

Apart from DoD pandemic planning, the DoD Telework Policy

states that telework will be actively promoted and

implemented throughout the DoD in support of emergency

preparedness. The policy recognizes that during a pandemic,

essential and non-essential personnel and Service members may

be asked to telework; therefore, periodic telework exercises

are required to ensure its effectiveness in continuing

operations and an efficient transition to telework in the

event of a pandemic.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, DoD Components began

transitioning to maximum telework in mid-March 2020. On March

18, 2020, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense issued a

memorandum stating that DoD Components could execute their

pandemic plans, or portions of their plans, at any time to

ensure the ability to perform their essential functions.

To determine the extent to which DoD Components provided

access to DoD information technology and communications

during maximum telework in response to the COVID-19 pandemic,

we administered a 43-question survey to a sample of DoD

military and civilian personnel. In August 2020, we invited

269,282 DoD military and civilian personnel to respond to our

survey to share their teleworking experiences from March 15

through August 26, 2020. We received a total of 56,057

responses, comprising 7,323 military and 48,734 civilian

personnel, for a 20.8 percent overall response rate. We also

conducted interviews with officials from the DoD Office of

the Chief Information Officer, the DoD COVID-19 Telework

Readiness Task Force, and the Offices of the Chief

Information Officer for 10 DoD Components to obtain their

perspectives on the infrastructure established to support the

increased number of teleworking personnel.

Finding

According to the 54,665 respondents who reported their

telework status, the DoD transitioned 88.2 percent of

respondents to full- or part-time telework from March 15,

2020 through August 26, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Of the 11.8 percent of respondents who continued to work on

site, the most common reasons provided by survey respondents

for not teleworking were that their work could not be

performed while teleworking, or they were not eligible to

telework. Of those who teleworked, survey

respondents reported problems accessing DoD Component

networks, voice and video teleconference applications, and

identified shortfalls in Government-furnished equipment

available to DoD personnel when their Components first

transitioned to maximum telework in mid-March 2020.

However, the problems cited in survey responses lessened

over time as the DoD increased its network availability

and capacity, added voice and video conferencing

applications, and purchased and distributed computer and

communications equipment.

Based on the results of the survey and interviews with DoD

officials, the DoD's initial challenges occurred because some

DoD Components had not fully tested whether their information

systems could support Government-wide mandated telework and

had not conducted telework exercises with their personnel

before March 2020 as required by the DoD Implementation Plan

and the DoD Telework Policy. Therefore, some DoD Components

were unprepared for the network and communications

limitations, as well as equipment and application shortfalls,

uncovered by the transition to maximum telework. While the

Marine Corps, Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA), Defense

Information Systems Agency (DISA), and the Defense Logistics

Agency (DLA) were able to immediately transition to maximum

telework, the Army, Navy, Air Force, Defense Contract

Management Agency (DCMA), Defense Finance Accounting Service

(DFAS), and Defense Health Agency (DHA) faced challenges

during the transition.

The ability of DoD personnel to perform essential and non-

essential tasks while on maximum telework depends on DoD

Components' ability to provide enough network capacity,

communication tools, and equipment to enable the DoD's

essential and non-essential personnel to stay mission-ready

and productive while in a telework status. Some teleworking

personnel reported that they found their own alternative

solutions including the use of unauthorized video

conferencing applications and personal laptops, printers, and

cell phones to complete their work because some DoD

Components were unprepared for maximum telework. However,

using unauthorized applications or sharing DoD information

over improperly secured devices, even temporarily, increases

the risk of exposing sensitive departmental information that

could impact national security and DoD missions.

Overall, DoD Components and the majority of survey

respondents expressed positive maximum telework experiences.

Specifically, 88.1 percent of survey respondents stated that

their productivity level remained the same or increased

during maximum telework, regardless of their Component's

initial telework challenges. Many survey respondents reported

a desire to telework regularly in the future (37,146

responses) and expressed appreciation for commuting less

often (27,711 responses), better work-life balance (25,508

responses), and more flexible work hours (22,461 responses).

recommendations

We recommend that the ASD(HD&GS) revise the DoD

Implementation Plan for Pandemic Influenza to update planning

assumptions with the use of telework for essential and non-

essential personnel, align the DoD Implementation Plan with

the DoD Telework Policy, and require DoD Components to update

their plans to include revised assumptions regarding telework

for personnel and the resources required to support the

teleworking workforce.

We recommend that the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy

(USD[P]), in coordination with the Under Secretary of Defense

for Personnel and Readiness, establish management oversight

procedures to verify that DoD Components have performed the

testing, training, and exercise requirements of the DoD

Implementation Plan and the DoD Telework Policy. The

oversight procedures should assess the ability of DoD

Components to support Government-wide mandated telework,

including the results of tests of network and

communications systems and telework exercises with

personnel.

management comments and our response

The Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (DUSD[P]),

responding for the USD(P) and the ASD(HD&GS) did not respond

to the recommendation to require DoD Components to update

their Pandemic Plans to include revised assumptions regarding

telework for personnel and the resources required to support

the teleworking workforce. Therefore, the recommendation is

unresolved. We request that the ASD(HD&GS) provide comments

on the final report.

The DUSD(P) did not agree or disagree with the other two

recommendations in the report. However, the DUSD(P) stated

that the ASD(HD&GS) would work with the Joint Staff and the

U.S. Northern Command to include the use of telework for

essential and non-essential personnel in the Functional

Campaign Plan--Pandemics and Infectious Diseases, which will

replace the DoD Implementation Plan for Pandemic Influenza,

and align the plan with the DoD Telework Policy. In addition,

the DUSD(P) stated that the ASD(HD&GS) would also work with

the Joint Staff to include the use of telework for essential

and non-essential personnel in the Global Integration

Framework--Pandemics and Infectious Diseases.

Furthermore, the DUSD(P) stated that her office would

support and advocate for oversight procedures to verify that

DoD Components performed the testing, training, and exercise

requirements of the Global Integration Framework--Pandemics

and Infectious Diseases, the Functional Campaign Plan--

Pandemics and Infectious Diseases, the DoD Telework Policy,

and the Pandemic Plans. Therefore, the recommendations are

resolved, but will remain open until the ASD(HD&GS) updates

the Functional Campaign Plan--Pandemics and Infectious

Diseases and the Global Integration Framework--Pandemics and

Infectious Diseases to include the use of telework for

essential and non-essential personnel and USD(P) provides

oversight procedures for verifying that DoD Components

performed the required testing, training, and exercises.

Mr. Speaker, based on 56,000 respondents to its survey, 88 percent of the Department of Defense respondents found telework accommodations increased their overall productivity. This is not my imagination. This is how thousands and thousands of them responded in the survey.

A similar 2021 survey conducted by the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 700,000 Federal employees all across the country, found that 62 percent of them surveyed thought significantly that their productivity had been increased while teleworking based on what their previous levels were.

So Federal workers are performing for the American people and have been under the most difficult circumstances even before we got to COVID. I know that because I, like many of you, had a chance to speak to so many of them.

As the chair of the Subcommittee on Government Operations, this particular issue is welcomed before the subcommittee. I will convene hearings next week so that we can figure out where we are in a bipartisan way and move forward.

Mr. Speaker, I would make one point. Federal workers are not here in Washington, D.C., alone. That is the misnomer. Federal workers are in everybody's district in this entire Congress. They are looking to us to try to find a way to help them, not to punish them in 30 days. We are not going to save money on gas. We are not going to save money on energy. We are just going to go back to where we are.

Mr. Speaker, I would strongly urge that this measure be defeated.