Sen. Ted Cruz pushes to bar ‘asinine’ vaccine mandate funding amid shutdown talks
The Biden administration’s vaccine mandates are “asinine” and “dangerous,” Sen. Ted Cruz told reporters Thursday.
And Cruz was among the Senate Republicans to push for a vote Thursday to prohibit funding for the vaccine mandates.
The vote came amid talks to fund the government, which was set to run out of most of its funding on Friday. Cruz and other Republican Senators had threatened to vote against funding the government if there was no vote to bar vaccine mandate funding.
“We have seen in the course of this pandemic, Democrats being very comfortable with being petty tyrants and decrees that you must obey their medical mandates,” Cruz said. “I’m not going to support any legislation that funds vaccine mandates.”
In recent months, the Biden administration has announced vaccine mandates for health care workers and mandated that workers at private businesses with 100 or more employees be vaccinated or provide weekly negative COVID-19 test results.
The mandates have faced legal challenges. A federal judge in Louisiana this week blocked a vaccine mandate for health care workers at hospitals that receive federal funding. In November, the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals halted the policy for private businesses.
“Joe Biden knows they’re lawless,” Cruz said. “His lawyers have told him that the vaccine mandates are contrary to law. And Democrats don’t care. They don’t care about medical privacy.”
Polls have shown a majority of Americans support vaccine mandates.
The plan to keep the government funded through mid-February ultimately passed the House of Representatives and Senate on Thursday.
The Senate passage followed the vaccine mandate funding vote. Senators voted along party lines, which meant Senate Republicans were unsuccessful in their effort to prohibit vaccine funding.
The number of Republican senators who focused on a vote to bar vaccine mandate funding was relatively small, with Cruz joining Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, as key players in the issue.
This story was originally published December 2, 2021 at 4:26 PM.