Republican Senators Marsha Blackburn and Roger Marshall have introduced a resolution to nullify vaccine mandates for healthcare workers.
The formal resolution of disapproval already has more than 30 co-sponsors.
A similar bill aimed at the vaccine-or-test mandate for businesses with over 100 employees passed with a 52-48 vote when Senators Joe Manchin and Jon Tester voted with the GOP.
“The Congressional Review Act (CRA), which was enacted in 1996, sets up a fast-track process in the Senate that allows the minority party to force a vote on a resolution to disapprove of a federal rule. The CRA, however, does not have a fast-track process for the House,” The Hill reports. “Instead, Republicans are hoping to get the simple majority needed to force a vote through a discharge petition, which will require support from a handful of House Democrats.”
Even if the bill does pass through the House, however, President Joe Biden can — and likely will — veto it.
“Tennessee’s healthcare workers should not be fired from showing up to work and providing lifesaving care. This resolution will stop the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) from firing the nurses, doctors, and medical professionals that care for the elderly, poor, and most vulnerable,” Blackburn said in a statement.
The mandate was created by Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which is requiring vaccines at any healthcare provider that participates in Medicare and Medicaid.
Over 30,000 healthcare workers have left their jobs over the vaccine mandates in New York alone.
The mandate-driven worker shortages and terminations, coupled with rising omicron cases, have caused such a staffing crisis that Biden has had to deploy military doctors to fill the need in hospitals.
“We’re mobilizing an additional 1,000 military doctors and nurses and medics to help staff hospitals,” Biden said Monday during the COVID-19 Response Team’s call with the National Governors Association. “FEMA is deploying hundreds of ambulances and EMS crews to transport patients. We’ve already deployed emergency response teams in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Vermont, New Hampshire, and New Mexico. We’re ready to provide more hospital beds as well.”
