WaPo (“Congress moves to end military’s coronavirus vaccine mandate“):
Congress is poised to force the Pentagon to end the military’s coronavirus vaccine mandate under compromise legislation to authorize funding for the Defense Department, a major capitulation for Democrats who championed the policy despite sharp controversy in the ranks over its implementation.
The abrupt termination of the requirement, which became Pentagon policy in August 2021, came after Republican lawmakers threatened to stymie action on the $858 billion bill. It was incorporated into the legislation in apparent defiance of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who “supports maintaining the vaccine mandate,” Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said this week, adding: “The health and readiness of our forces is critical to our warfighting capability and a top priority.”
Yet Republicans who championed the repeal were quick to label it a first step, calling on the Biden administration to reenlist service members discharged under the policy.
“Make no mistake: this is a win for our military,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in a statement late Tuesday night, warning that when the GOP takes over the House next year, Republicans will “work to finally hold the Biden administration accountable and assist the men and women in uniform who were unfairly targeted.”
[…]
The House is expected to pass the measure Wednesday, setting up a vote in the Senate that would send the measure to Biden for final approval — and maintain a six-decade long tradition of Congress passing defense authorization bills, even when other parts of the federal government failed to receive such focused consideration.
But the new programs may not come online for some time. Lawmakers have yet to reach a deal to fund the government with a budget bill that would take all of the authorized measures into account. And as the deadline looms — the current federal budget expires Dec. 16 — Congress may have to pass a short-term spending measure to avert a government shutdown before the holidays, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) predicted Tuesday.
Military Times (“Military COVID-19 vaccine mandate repealed in defense bill compromise“) adds:
House and Senate lawmakers on Tuesday night unveiled plans for a compromise defense authorization bill which would boost the military budget by 8% over fiscal 2022 levels and rescind the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for service members.
[…]
Although the authorization bill is considered must-pass legislation annually, this year’s deliberations have dragged on for months.
For the second consecutive year, the Senate did not pass its own version of the bill, opting instead to make adjustments to the House-passed version from this summer rather than taking amendment votes on their own military policy priorities.
And in recent days, numerous Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate threatened to oppose the measure unless it included language dumping the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin both defended the vaccine requirement this week as necessary for military health and readiness. Whether the president may veto the final legislation because of the provision’s inclusion remains unclear.
So far this year, more than 8,000 active-duty service members have been dismissed from the ranks for refusing the vaccine. The vast majority of troops have agreed to the shots.
Opponents have argued that because most troops are young and fit, and because the military is in the midst of a recruiting crisis, the vaccine mandate is discouraging some potential recruits and forcing others out of the ranks.
The authorization bill language does not include any language mandating troops dismissed for refusing the vaccine to be reinstated, another demand of conservative lawmakers.
With Biden having declared the epidemic over, the urgency of the mandate is less clear than it once was. Still, this is a bizarre hill to die on. The US military has required all manner of vaccines as a condition of service—and often more in preparation for overseas deployments—since time immemorial. This one has been proven safe and reasonably effective. Indeed, the reason we’re in an endemic phase is that COVID-19 is no longer a death sentence for the vast majority of people.
One would think this action would bolster lawsuits of those who have been kicked out—at least in some cases denying folks the opportunity to earn pensions they were close to earning—for refusal to comply. For that matter, those who were coerced into getting the shots even over religious objections would seem to have a case. Yes, sovereign immunity makes suing the government hard; but this would seem to make it easier.
