President Joe Biden announced on Thursday an extension of an eviction moratorium already deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Biden also said he will sign an Executive Order that will require that federal government employees and contractors will now be required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will create a rule for private businesses with 100 or more employees to require their employees to be vaccinated or undergo weekly testing.
According to a senior administration official, it was estimated that this new OSHA requirement will cover about 100 million workers and business that do not comply with the agency’s rule and can face substantial fees, up to $14,000. OSHA will require these employers to offer paid time off for vaccination.
Does 80 million seem familiar? Wonder who these 100 million people are? It would not be surprising that the President would ignore the law going forward with his imperiled presidency. But Biden’s latest blow in his campaign against the coronavirus is a legal mess destined for endless court challenges. It is a logistical nightmare with little likelihood of doing anything other than adding to our problems causing additional tightening of the labor market and further upsetting the sentiment of the vaccine hesitant and those with immunity or religious reasons.
Biden’s signature mandate is directed at the 100 million workers at private businesses with 100 or more employees. “OSHA will issue an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) to implement this requirement,” the administration said.
As part of his effort to vaccinate the federal executive branch, the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Indian Health Service and the National Institutes of Health will complete the implementation of their previously announced vaccination requirements that cover 2.5 million people.
This is an escalation of the president’s action in July calling for federal workers to attest to their vaccination status and submit to mitigation efforts if they are not vaccinated, such as mask usage and regular testing.
Biden also announced that the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) interstate travel mask mandate will be extended through January 18, 2022, with the fine for noncompliance doubling and health care facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement must require employees to be vaccinated. This will cover about 17 million health care workers across the country.
In a briefing call with reporters a senior administration official said, “In total, the new vaccination requirements in the president’s plan cover about 100 million workers, which represents about two thirds of all workers in the U.S.
According to a White House official, the president’s plan included six areas of focus: vaccinating the unvaccinated, furthering protection for the vaccinated, keeping schools safely open, increasing testing and requiring masking, protecting the economy’s recovery, and improving care for those with COVID-19.
It is very doubtful the president’s plan is legal. While the administration offers an unseemly amount of authority to the Labor Department in the name of workplace safety, legal challenges will likely range from the 14th Amendment to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Even if a challenge should fail, the odds of a district court judge issuing a nationwide injunction are decent enough to render the rule a gamble. All of this remains to be seen in the exact text of the rule.
What is so puzzling is how Biden believes this can be enforced. Just within the last couple of days, Democrats and much of the media went apoplectic at the prospect of Texas deputizing citizens to enforce their new abortion ban law. But, now employers are supposed to report on each other to the federal government should a company fail to comply! And we are not even mentioning the economic implications that will result from the already tight labor market.
From the time in late 2020 where Democrats were casting doubt about the vaccine during the Trump administration, to when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris said they would never take a vaccine approved by Trump, up to the present time where the White House, the Biden administration, and the public health bureaucracy have failed to sell the vaccine successfully, and now Biden has resorted to an effort of brute force.
Add in the complete disaster in Afghanistan, where President Joe Biden has blood on his hands, he lied to the American people and told them we would stay until every American that wanted to come home would. Then the loss of our 13 service members.
How much more are the American people going to take before they stand up and demand their representatives to take action against this presidential administration that continually breaks the law of this country and constitution.
