On the recordFebruary 29, 2012
I thank the Senator for her leadership and from the beginning of this discussion back in August when Senator Ayotte, Senator Rubio, Senator Nelson from Nebraska and I introduced this bill, we have been joined in this amendment by three dozen or more other sponsors, one of whom actually I mentioned a piece of legislation he was involved in the first time he was in the Senate. It protected the religious rights of people who were temporarily in the country, with exactly this same language, who might have some religious belief or moral conviction that meant they didn't want to get the vaccines we would require a visitor to have. In 1996 Senator Coats put this in a law that virtually every Member of the Senate serving today, in both parties, voted for, as they have time after time when this issue was brought up. This language was understood to be an important defense of the first amendment in a health care piece of legislation. I am glad Senator Coats has joined us today. Whenever I researched this, I saw that he had used this very language 15 years ago in a piece of legislation. I know the Senator is an important advocate of religious freedom.
