By Matt Dean and AnneMarie Schieber
Gov. Laura Kelly of Kansas broke with the Biden administration’s sweeping nationwide coronavirus vaccine mandate, calling the move “too late.”
“I don’t believe this directive is the correct, or the most effective, solution for Kansas,” said Kelly, a Democrat, in a statement on November 5.
Kelly’s statement echoed the sentiments of many Republican governors who have stressed the need to maintain state-based responses to the pandemic.
This is a bold statement coming from a Democrat because the Biden administration has consistently scolded anyone not falling in line with federal mandates as a “science denier.” Either Kelly wants to risk the health of Kansans in an effort to win reelection next year in a tight race, or, more likely, she regards the mandate for what it is: a federal government power grab that goes against the sentiments of the people in her state.
Credibility Gap
Like many other Americans, Kansans have lost faith in the federal government’s role in fighting COVID-19.
Despite governments’ often-draconian efforts to control the pandemic, such as the lockdowns, the mask orders, and the trillions of dollars that have been spent, the virus is still with us. In fact, the governments’ responses failed to protect those most at risk of dying from the virus and created additional problems when states chose to lock down their economies, which were running on all cylinders until the pandemic lockdowns.
Kelly has only to look at her neighbors to know top-down government orders to control a virus have been an abject failure. States such as Nebraska, Oklahoma, and South Dakota had some of the least restrictive pandemic orders in the nation, suffered no worse from COVID-19 than other states, and now have the lowest unemployment rates in the nation.
Federal policies today have more to do with cementing the government’s control than serving the public good.
OSHA Excess
This seems to be the mindset driving President Joe Biden’s use of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to turn private businesses into the federal government’s COVID-19 vaccine enforcer.
The president’s executive order, which could levy fines of up to $700,000 for noncompliance, will affect more than half of the nation’s workforce. In Kansas, the order would affect 620,000 private-sector workers, according to 2019 data from the U.S. Small Business Administration.
If courts allow the mandate to continue, it could expand to include businesses with fewer than 100 employees and self-employed people, reaching another 400,000 workers. The Biden administration is already considering requiring COVID-19 vaccine proof to fly on commercial flights within the United States.
Biden’s OSHA order, so thick it could be weighed on a household scale, is a whopping 490 pages. Laughably, masks, which are required of workers who refuse the vaccines, get short shrift. The order states, “face coverings can be manufactured or homemade, and they can incorporate a variety of designs, structures, and materials.”
“Really?” asks the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. “Sounds less like a safety measure than a punishment for people who decline vaccination.”
Public Pushback
Kelly is smart to recognize a growing number of Americans are on to this ruse. In her own state, labor, a traditional base of the Democrat Party, has already voiced its opposition to vaccine orders, with one union threatening legal action against a large employer before the Biden order came down.
As seen in this year’s elections on November 2, voters are no longer willing to put up with governors who kowtow to radicals. States, businesses, school boards, health departments, and other institutions, private or public, are not the proxies of a federal government on steroids.
The American people are good and trusting, yet their patience and forgiveness rightly have limits. Businesses, hospitals, and local units of government must now decide how far is too far in mandating people inject themselves and their children with a vaccine or risk losing their job or their place in school. We all must make commonsense decisions to protect ourselves and our families from the virus.
We must also protect ourselves from those who would use a virus to divide the country politically to increase the power and wealth of a few.
Matt Dean (MDean@heartland.org) is a senior fellow for health care policy outreach at The Heartland Institute. AnneMarie Schieber (amschieber@heartland.org) is the managing editor of Health Care News. A version of this article appeared at RedState on November 17, 2021. Reprinted with permission.