U.S. may consider ending COVID vaccine mandate for military: White House

By Staff Reuters
Posted December 3, 2022 

With a new COVID-19 subvariant surging in the U.S., many health experts are advising people to get a booster does of a COVID-19 vaccine before we see another wave. 

President Joe Biden’s administration is mulling a proposal from Republican leader Kevin McCarthy to repeal the U.S. military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, the White House said on Saturday.

McCarthy, who is vying to become speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, earlier told Fox News he had won bipartisan agreement to lift the mandate at a White House meeting with Biden, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

McCarthy said it would be repealed as part of the must-pass $817 billion National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, an annual bill setting policy for the Pentagon that is expected to pass the Senate and House of Representatives this month.


READ MORE: U.S. faces pivotal years in countering the ‘China challenge,’ Pentagon chief warns

But the White House said Biden had agreed only to consider the idea.

“Leader McCarthy raised this with the president and the president told him he would consider it,” said White House spokesperson Olivia Dalton. “The secretary of defense has recommended retaining the mandate, and the president supports his position. Discussions about the NDAA are ongoing.”

The mandate, which was imposed in August 2021, requires all U.S. service members to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

“You know what I was able to achieve in that meeting? To be able (to) – we’re going to see in the NDAA — lift the vaccination mandate on our military men and women,” McCarthy, the top House Republican, said in the interview, which aired late on Friday.

Biden gets shot, says vaccines ‘necessity’ to prevent re-entering national emergency

“I know I’m going to get that,” McCarthy said. “We’re working it out right now. I believe we’re … going to get that.”

There was no immediate comment from the other three congressional leaders at the meeting.

The Pentagon’s vaccine mandate has been the object of intense opposition from Republican conservatives, including several House lawmakers who are threatening to block McCarthy from becoming speaker when Republicans take control of the chamber on Jan. 3.

According to Defense Department data, 3,717 Marines, 1,816 soldiers and 2,064 sailors have been discharged for refusing to get vaccinated. But federal courts this year have blocked military services from punishing personnel who have refused the vaccines on religious grounds.

McCarthy presented the vaccine mandate deal as a sign of how he would lead the House as speaker. He also rebutted conservative criticism over his attendance at a White House state dinner for French President Emmanuel Macron.

“That’s the things that we’re going to have with the new Republican majority,” McCarthy told Fox News.


“If somebody wants to argue about whether I’ll represent this country right and respect the very first ally that helped us create this nation, I don’t think they have their hearts in the right place.”

EXCLUSIVE
Defense bill could roll back Covid vaccine policy, top Dem says

Such a move would be a big win for Republicans, but proposals to reinstate troops already kicked out do not appear to be viable.


Preventative Medicine Services NCOIC Sergeant First Class Demetrius Roberson administers a Covid-19 vaccine to a soldier on Sept. 9, 2021, in Fort Knox, Ky. | Jon Cherry/Getty Images

By CONNOR O’BRIEN and BRYAN BENDER

12/03/2022

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — Final defense legislation set to be unveiled next week could undo the Pentagon’s policy of kicking out troops for not taking the Covid vaccine, the Democratic chair of the House Armed Services Committee said Saturday.

Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said a rollback of the policy is on the table for a compromise version of the National Defense Authorization Act, but hasn’t been decided yet.


“We haven’t resolved it, but it is very fair to say that it’s in discussion,” Smith told POLITICO on the sidelines of the Reagan National Defense Forum. He noted that the mandate may not be logical anymore.

“I was a very strong supporter of the vaccine mandate when we did it, a very strong supporter of the Covid restrictions put in place by DoD and others,” he added. “But at this point in time, does it make sense to have that policy from August 2021? That is a discussion that I am open to and that we’re having.”

The defense bill is set to be unveiled Monday and House leaders plan to hold a vote on the $847 billion policy measure sometime next week. Negotiators had hoped to file the legislation on Friday, but congressional leaders were still ironing out several outstanding issues, apparently including the vaccine policy.

Undoing the policy — a measure that neither the House nor Senate included in their versions of the defense bill — would be a win for Republicans who argue forcing troops to get the shot or leave the military is exacerbating a recruiting and retention crisis. Thousands of troops have been kicked out for refusing the vaccine.

GOP leaders are planning to focus on the policy when they take control of the House, if it isn’t rolled back before then.

Republican lawmakers and governors have pressed hard to undo the mandate in recent days. A group of 13 Republican senators, led by Rand Paul of Kentucky, have promised to try to block the bill unless they’re granted a vote on an amendment to bar kicking out military personnel solely for refusing a Covid-19 vaccine and reinstate separated troops with back pay.

And Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) has pushed legislation to suspend the policy when the military isn’t meeting its target levels for personnel.

While negotiators are willing to entertain the possibility of undoing the policy, Smith said GOP calls to reinstate or grant back pay to troops who refused the shot amounted to a red line. He called the push “a horrible idea.”

“The one thing that I was adamant about — so were others — is there’s going to be no reinstatement or back pay for the people who refused to obey the order to get the vaccine,” Smith said. “Orders are not optional in the military.”

“Now what the policy should be from this point forward? That’s a question we were willing to ask about,” he said.

Smith all but endorsed the idea that the need for mandating the armed forces receive a Covid vaccine has passed.

He said the “pandemic has winded down,” noting that most law enforcement and health officials in his home state of Washington are no longer required to be vaccinated.

“We were very, very aggressive in Washington state on a wide variety of Covid policies,” he said. “Vaccine mandates have been lifted by a wide variety of agencies — police departments, fire departments, health departments — because of where we’re at right now and the effect of the vaccine and the effect of people who caught the disease.”

He also noted that the current Pentagon policy does not require booster shots for the coronavirus.

“At this point, let’s say you got those two shots or that one shot in March of 2021,” Smith said. “Those people can serve, but someone who hasn’t gotten anything can’t?”