Thanks to the onerous Covid vaccine mandate still being imposed across all branches of the U.S. military, recruitment numbers have been down and nearly all branches have missed their goals in recent years.
As vaccine mandates become less and less popular, the time seems riper than ever for a repeal of the Covid vaccine mandate to be included in the annual defense bill. While most of the push is coming from the Republican side, the question is whether Democrats will stand in the way or allow the mandate to quietly expire as part of the spending package:
Repealing the military vaccine mandate is currently in the legislative text of the NDAA, a source familiar with the bill told the Washington Examiner. While the language would need to survive a Democratic-controlled Congress, support for government vaccine mandates has fallen across the board.
“Our recruiting goals are way short. The conflict in the world is getting worse, not better. We need more people in the military, not less,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said as he joined colleagues in threatening to withhold his vote from the NDAA without movement on an effort to end the military mandate.
Twenty-one Republican governors signed a letter to congressional leaders on Wednesday demanding an end to the military vaccine through either the NDAA or a stand-alone bill.
Thirteen GOP senators wrote in a separate letter on Wednesday that they would not vote to advance the NDAA without an amendment ending the mandate and reinstating, with back pay, any service member kicked out of the military for declining the vaccine.
As noted by the Examiner story above, there still remain warring factions within the GOP over how to have this fight. Yes, most of the party wants to see the mandate repealed but doesn’t want to be seen fighting over military spending. On the other hand, the opportunity seems like the best shot to pass the next budget while also ensuring that the various branches have fewer roadblocks to meeting their recruitment goals.
What good is defense spending if there’s no one left on the wall with a gun to do the defending? Given what we know about the vaccine’s effectiveness and the fact that it does not prevent the spread Covid and is generally unnecessary in a healthy population, it’s well past time to remove this unnecessary burden.
Should the mandate be repealed, however, the next question on the docket is what should be done with military members who were forced out over their choice to remain unvaccinated. Some are calling for back pay while others believe that’s a fight for another day:
Precise figures for how many service members have been discharged or dissuaded from enlisting because of the vaccine mandate are difficult to come by, but estimates suggest a significant number of people have been affected.
For example, the Army National Guard projected losing up to 14,000 members for noncompliance with the mandate over the next two years.
The back pay is likely the thorniest of the issues surrounding the Pentagon vaccine mandate fight because it could open up an expensive and subjective review process for thousands of personnel cases.
There’s no question that any member who wishes to re-enlist if the mandate is repealed should be considered for back pay. It would immediately help with recruitment goals and provide some means of restitution for kicking out members of the armed forces over a personal healthcare decision. If that can of worms gets opened, of course, then other arguments would be made that anyone kicked out over their Covid vaccine status should receive some kind of recompense. Where does the line get drawn? That’s for Congress to figure out.
There’s no indication yet whether this will happen but it seems at least plausible that the upcoming defense bill might at least remove the Covid vax mandate and leave the question of compensation for anyone harmed by the previous policy to battle for another day. Congress is, after all, the greatest kick the can team of all time.
