Political Quotes

“The amendment that I am offering would prohibit the District of Columbia from using Federal funding to require that elementary or secondary school students take the COVID-19 vaccine and all the boosters to attend school. In 2021, the D.C. City Council voted to create an unscientific mandate that D.C. students be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 including boosters. It was repeatedly delayed, as the parents of more than 40 percent of children over 12 in D.C. decided the COVID-19 vaccine was not worth the risks and declined to get vaccinated. Today, the mandate would keep 73 percent of all D.C. students between the ages of 12 and 17 out of classrooms. Now, the issue here, obviously, is twofold. One is whether Congress should have a role in impacting policy choices in the District of Columbia, which the Constitution clearly contemplates. In fact, the District of Columbia is not a State. It was not designed to be a State. It is not going to be a State because the District of Columbia was set up in our Constitution to be our National Capital, by design, very specifically. One of the things that we are able to do as a Congress is effect policy in the District of Columbia, whereas we are not supposed to intervene for the most part in the laboratories of democracy among the States. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle never find any limit to their ability to want to interject into the States. One of the things we can do in D.C. is try to impact policy here.…”