Darrell Issa: “I thank the gentleman for yielding. The passion with which you speak is the passion that the American people feel right…”

“I thank the gentleman for yielding. The passion with which you speak is the passion that the American people feel right now. One of the things that you said in the mandate that particularly I have seen for the men and women in uniform, for my chief warrant officer, who after 23 years is being forced out, for my Lutheran minister, who has 16 years and they will not accept his religious exemption--what I am seeing, though, that I think the American people need to understand is, it is not going to change the number of people who are vaccinated. Firing somebody simply means they go from being an employed person to an unemployed person, a productive person to somebody less productive. We are literally making, as you and I speak, our military less productive at a time in which the Russians are at the Ukrainian border prepared to snuff out a democracy. So your passion is the passion of the American people. You must continue for the next 14 days. We cannot fund this kind of a power play, particularly when, as you said so eloquently, it doesn't reduce the spread of the virus. It is dubious as to whether it actually reduces the impact when you get it. And lastly, if you don't get it, what they do is they choose to fire you, fire our first responders, fire our military people, and it is not going to change anything. Because if somebody believes it is either unhealthy for them, or for religious reasons doesn't want to, firing them isn't going to change it.…”