Congress is set to end the covid vaccine mandate for members of the U.S. military through the passage of the annual defense bill heading for a vote this week in Congress.
Republicans, emboldened by their new House majority next year, pushed the effort, which was confirmed Tuesday night when the bill was unveiled. House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy personally lobbied President Joe Biden in a meeting last week to roll back the mandate.Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said the removal of the vaccination requirement was essential for the defense policy bill to move forward.”We have real recruitment and retention problems across all services. This was gas on the fire exacerbating our existing problem,” Rogers said. “And the president said, you know, the pandemic is over. It’s time for us to recognize that and remove this unnecessary policy.”
Of course, the Biden administration is slamming the move.
President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and military leaders have strongly backed the vaccine mandate as necessary to safeguard the health and readiness of the U.S. armed forces.”We continue to believe that repealing the vaccine mandate is a mistake,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.”Republicans in Congress have obviously decided that they’d rather fight against the health and well being of those troops, rather than protecting them,” Kirby added.
There are many reasons to support the move, not the least of which is that the vaccines neither stop the transmission of the virus nor prevent anyone from catching covid in many of its assorted variants. People should be allowed to make a personal choice in whether the risks of vaccination outweigh the risks of infection.
Furthermore, there has been a sharp decline in recruitment, and the vaccine mandate cannot be helping.
The US military is facing the greatest recruiting challenge in almost half a century, since the inception of the volunteer service, Pentagon leaders are warning Congress.“The Department anticipates we will collectively miss our recruiting mission despite accessing more than 170,000 remarkable young men and women” in the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, Stephanie Miller, deputy assistant secretary of defense for military personnel policy, said Wednesday in prepared testimony before the Senate Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee. “This constitutes an unprecedented mission gap and is reason for concern.”While all the military services struggle to attract new recruits, the Army’s hurdles in particular paint a troubling picture for Pentagon leaders. Despite reducing its recruiting goals, the largest military service is falling more than 10,000 soldiers short this year, and is projecting a gap of at least 21,000 active-duty troops in 2023.
One Marine Corps commander confirms that the vaccine mandate has been detrimental to recruitment efforts.
Speaking during a panel at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger defended the vaccine mandate as a necessity for keeping the force healthy. But he indicated the mandate has posed problems for recruiting in pockets of the United States where vaccine misinformation is prevalent.“Where it is having an impact for sure is on recruiting, where in parts of the country there’s still myths and misbeliefs about the back story behind it,” Berger said.
Here is hoping this is just one of many Biden administration policies that get rescinded, ended, and reversed.
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