Republican Utah Senator Mike Lee has introduced seven bills designed to revoke power of the Executive Branch to incentivize people to get the coronavirus vaccine through workplace mandates in a lonely effort to weaken vaccination promotion, the Salt Lake City Tribune reports.
The bills range in scope from stopping vaccine mandates by allowing people to sue the federal government over them, to stoking fears about them by requiring the Food and Drug Administration to disclose all potential side effects no matter how small or unlikely. Lee also introduced a bill to exempt people from any government coronavirus vaccine mandates based on broad and unverifiable “personal beliefs” such as political suspicion about the efficacy of the vaccine.
Lee’s efforts, which have yet to attract a co-sponsor for any of the bills, likely demonstrate Lee’s fears that ongoing court challenges to vaccine mandates implemented by federal, state and local governments will fail, requiring Congress to pass laws that give anti-vaxxers bases for which to sue on other grounds. None of the bills appear to have enough support to pass the Senate.