Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) released the following statement regarding President Joe Biden’s announced rule requiring that, in order to work, all employees of private employers with 100 or more employees must be vaccinated or subject to at-least-weekly COVID testing:
“I visited with my doctor, and made the personal choice to get the vaccine - a product of President Trump’s miraculous Operation Warp Speed - and I have continually encouraged others to do the same.
But this should be a personal decision for each Tennessean, in consultation with his or her doctor, not a top-down order from the federal government. This latest unlawful command by President Biden, which he vowed he would not order, improperly puts the federal government between Tennesseans and their physicians.
“Not only is this an invasion of the doctor-patient relationship, and an attempt to distract from President Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, but having traveled the state over the last month, our businesses, particularly small ones, cannot find enough employees to hire, and the last thing they need is more draconian, one-size-fits-all, federal regulations that will make it even harder to hire and retain employees.
“Men and women have fought and died for the personal freedoms of all lawful Americans, and no President can take those liberties away. In fact, on July 23, when asked about the possibility of federal vaccine mandates, the White House Press Secretary stated: ‘that’s not the role of the federal government.’ I couldn’t agree more.”