Iowa Republicans one-up Biden’s bad vaccine policy

Government is a blunt instrument and state and federal officials are using it to whack us from both sides of the COVID-19 vaccine debate.

In Washington, D.C., we have President Joe Biden and his legions of bureaucrats overstepping their bounds by peddling a probably illegal workplace vaccine mandate.

And in Des Moines, we have Republican lawmakers poised to lurch belligerently in the other direction with a bill that would ban even private employers from requiring vaccines for their workers.

It makes you wonder — are Iowa Republicans opposed to mandates or just opposed to COVID-19 vaccines?

The Biden administration had a bad day in court last week when the Supreme Court heard arguments over an emergency standard to require employers with 100 or more employees to either require their workforces to be vaccinated or wear masks and undergo weekly testing.

The rule goes far beyond the usual scope of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. It potentially effects tens of millions of workers but pays no mind to the vast differences between work situations — indoor versus outdoor, in close contact or sparsely populated.

The choice to test instead of getting vaccinated isn’t much of a choice at all considering the short supply and high price of COVID-19 tests in many situations. While employers usually have to cover the cost of OSHA requirements, the federal government in this case is allowing them to shift that burden onto workers.

It makes you wonder — is this really about workplace safety? Or, scrounging up inadequate authority for a general vaccine mandate, is this just a sidestep around the law? At least a few of the Supreme Court justices seemed to think it’s the second one.

“It appears that the federal government is going agency by agency as a workaround to its inability to get Congress to act,” Justice Neil Gorsuch said.

Where did Gorsuch get that idea? From Biden’s own chief of staff, for one.

A Twitter post shared by Biden’s right-hand man Ron Klain has been cited in court as an explanation for the White House’s true intentions with the workplace vaccine mandate.

Twitter

“OSHA doing this vaxx mandate as an emergency workplace safety rule is the ultimate work-around for the Federal govt to require vaccinations,” MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle tweeted in September, drawing a retweet from Klain, who probably should have his social media privileges taken away by his boss.

Regardless of what the court decides, Iowa officials say they don’t plan to enforce the OSHA standard. But seeing a bad idea and not willing to be outdone, Iowa Republicans are pitching perhaps an even worse policy.

GOP lawmakers will push a bill in the new legislative session to forbid businesses from firing employees over vaccines or even asking about employees’ vaccination status. It’s a clear affront to our rights to private property and free association.

With or without a federal requirement, business owners ought to have the ability to set their own standards for employment. You don’t have a right to a job where you don’t meet the employer’s qualifications.

It makes you wonder — are Iowa Republicans opposed to mandates or just opposed to COVID-19 vaccines?

Vaccines are good but so too are limits on government power. We shouldn’t abandon the latter in pursuit of the former.

Comments: (319) 339-3156; adam.sullivan@thegazette.com