Washington, D.C. — House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and Subcommittee on Health Chair Brett Guthrie (R-KY) today released the following statement after the Biden administration announced plans to lift COVID-19 vaccination requirement mandates for federal employees and international travelers, as well as begin the process to end vaccination requirements for Head Start educators and millions of workers in Centers for Medicare and Medicaid-certified (CMS) health care facilities:

“The Biden administration’s unscientific and authoritarian vaccination mandates unnecessarily threatened patient care through exacerbating workforce shortages, cost Americans’ their jobs, destroyed livelihoods, kept families apart, and sowed further distrust of our government health agencies. It’s outrageous that President Biden put these mandates in place and even worse that he kept these mandates for so long after we’ve known that the vaccines do not prevent transmission of the virus. It should not have taken legislative action to pressure this administration into bringing their policies in line with the reality the American people have been living in for years.” 

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• The House passed Rep. Jeff Duncan’s (R-SC) H.R. 497, the Freedom for Health Care Workers Act in January 2023, to lift the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate on federal health care workers. 
• The House passed H.R. 185, a bill to the End Cruel International Travel COVID Shot Mandate, to block a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Order that requires international travelers to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination in order to enter the U.S. on an airplane.