Who Will Stand for Private Enterprise?
President Biden's New Vaccine Rule Violates Principles of Free Enterprise, But Republicans Don't Care About It Either
President Biden’s proposed new OSHA rule requiring all employers with more than one hundred employees to have their employees vaccinated or pass a negative COVID test weekly is a massive big government power grab that violates the principle of free enterprise, of employers having the say over how their business is run. A decision on whether or not a business will have a vaccine mandate should be up to the employer, not the government.
Whether Biden’s proposed rule is legal is going to be something for the lawyers to debate, but it’s certainly poors gasoline on the already toxic divide between the vaxxed and the unvaxxed in this country, which is the opposite of Biden promised to do as a candidate. One concern I have as someone who supports vaccines is that Biden’s mandate could harden debate over vaccines, and with no benefit from additional vaccination because the mandate will get bogged down in court.
Many conservatives don’t have a lot of outrage on this issue as they’ve been urging state governments to pass anti-vaccine mandate rules, forbidding employers from mandating vaccines…even if they employers determine it’s required for employee and customer safety. The state of Arkansas banned employers from requiring the vaccine for two years.
I’m tired of COVID-19 and I’m tired of the stupid vaccine debates we have on social media, but I’m even more tired of executives ruling like potentates and making decrees from on high usurping the legislature. We’ve been in hard “pen and phone” governance for ten years with Obama, Biden, and Trump ruling like royals.
Republican outrage at Biden’s action isn’t credible, at least not as a constitutional matter or matter of principle. They’re not mad because of Biden’s imperiousness. They’re mad because the unvaccinated are a key part of the Republicans’ political coalition. You can tell how unserious the Republicans are because the leading contender for 2024 is the former pen and a phone President Donald Trump. If he doesn’t run, the frontrunner will be Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Fl) who has issued numerous executive power grabs to own the libs including his anti-vaccine passport activity. His press conferences on these matters might as well end with him saying, “So, let it be written, so let it be done.”
We desperately need a return of constitutional governance that respects the limits of the presidency and neither Biden, Trump, or DeSantis will provide it.
This is a Big Deal But…
I do see that political writers are overstating the impact of what is a big decision. Some have stated that Biden has just handed the 2022 elections to the Republicans and the Presidency to DeSantis in 2024. I’m wondering if this will be after the Republicans lose the 2022 election over the Texas heartbeat law as was predicted last week.
Political writers love for every story to be a big deal, but it’s not actually possible for every story to be as big a deal as they think it is or as they want it to be. I doubt this action (or the Texas heartbeat bill) will be forgotten by the time of the 2022 midterms, but I doubt either will be decisive.