Do Democrats want to reinstate mask mandates at the federal level? With their latest decision in the Senate, they are at least leaving open the possibility of it happening.
On Thursday, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass) blocked a bill proposed by Ohio Republican J.D. Vance to end, once and for all, mask mandates at the federal level.
"All of us have lived through the failed experiment of mass mandatory masking," Senator Vance said Thursday before Markey blocked the motion to have his bill considered on the floor. "Today, I want to ensure that we do not subject the American people to this tyranny again for the sake of nothing."
.@JDVance1 forces floor consideration of his bill To ban federal mask mandates : "All of us have gone through the experiment of mandatory masking. Today I want to make sure we do not subject the people to the tyranny for the sake of nothing...Mandatory masking was a failure." pic.twitter.com/IKvj0oClsO
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) September 7, 2023
Democrat Markey's justification for blocking the proposal called the Freedom to Breathe Act, is that it would "hinder the public health experts who guided our nation out of the pandemic."
This bill would prevent all federal officials, at all levels, from reinstating mask mandates.
According to Senator Vance, the Democrats' blockade of the bill shows that senators are interested in reimposing masks on citizens at the federal level amid the emergence of new variants of COVID-19 that have caused a slight increase in coronavirus cases.
Some health experts, like Anthony Fauci, are again recommending the use of masks despite data showing that new variants of the coronavirus are not making the impact of their predecessors and that the very effectiveness of the masks has been questioned by the scientific community.
"We tried mask mandates once in this country. They failed to control the spread of respiratory viruses, violated basic bodily freedom, and set our fellow citizens against one another," Vance said in a statement earlier this week. "This legislation will ensure that no federal bureaucracy, no commercial airline, and no public school can impose the misguided policies of the past. Democrats say they’re not going to bring back mask mandates—we’re going to hold them to their word."
