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Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, this bill would undermine the ability of States, cities, and towns across this country to make decisions about what is best for their communities.

It would silence and hamstring public health experts who have guided our Nation out of the darkest days of a pandemic that has killed 1,139,000 people in our country in 3 years. Let me repeat that.

This disease has killed 1,139,000 people already, and doctors and experts are saying that COVID is coming back. It is on the rise, once again. This provision would violate a long-held belief in the Republican Party that States and localities should not be told what to do by a Federal Government removed from the realities that they are seeing on the ground in their neighborhoods.

This bill is little more than an attempt by Republicans to dismantle a public health infrastructure that had to be built in order to deal with this greatest of pandemics since 1918. What public health experts and the medical professionals are talking about is an upcoming COVID and flu and RSV season and preparing for it.

These healthcare heroes are the same ones who risked their lives to save lives, and we should continue to protect that right to make decisions on the health of their patients, of their communities, and that is what locally focused healthcare is all about.

Here is what we do know. Last year, the combined forces of this ``tripledemic'' of flu, RSV, and COVID strained healthcare centers to a breaking point. Healthcare providers tried to keep up as emergency departments overflowed with sick children, adults, and seniors. And people are still getting sick.

This year, healthcare providers, health centers, public health departments, transportation workers, and school districts are, once again, preparing to protect students and seniors and disabled and immunocompromised people all across our country. Millions of Americans will be doing what we can to protect ourselves and our loved ones, and our communities must be able to take steps to save lives and keep people from getting sick or getting sicker, including the tools of vaccines and masks.

But the only thing that the Republicans seem willing to mask is their antipathy for making healthcare affordable and acceptable for millions of Americans. Republicans already fought this year to throw people off of Medicare and their health coverage. Not a single Republican voted to make insulin and other medications more affordable for seniors.

Republicans have blocked legislation to protect the right of individuals to make healthcare decisions with their doctors. It makes no sense to put limits on how communities and individuals can protect themselves. This bill is a red herring. It is a false debate. We should have an aquarium down in the well of the Senate to capture all of the red herrings that are being introduced into this public health debate. It is a distraction; it is misleading; and it is meant to deflect from what the GOP really stands for right now, ``Gimmicks Over People.''

Republicans have to understand that we have to provide the options for our healthcare heroes to save lives. They will make us less safe because they will be tying the hands of healthcare professionals in order to implement policies that protect against an addition to the 1.139 million people who have already died.

You argue that this bill is about freedom, but it is not. Freedom is parents and students knowing their school can take every step possible to keep them from getting sick or taking home an illness that could hurt their siblings, their parents, or their grandparents.

Freedom is workers who know their workplace on a plane, train, or even in a classroom is safe. Freedom is knowing that when people travel, either on their way to work by way of public transportation or across the country to visit family for the holidays, they will know that every safety measure is available to keep them and their families safe.

We must protect the freedom for communities to have every public health tool available, if it is needed in the opinion of the public health officials in that community, in that State. They should be the ones making the decision, at the local level, looking at the dangers to their population.

Again, these numbers are historic: 1,139,000 people have already died, and there is more coming. And if in the opinion of public health officials, strategies can be adopted using masks that reduce the likelihood that more will die, we should give them that freedom to make those decisions.

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