Rand Paul

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Reserving the right to object, once again, we are asked to extend the flood program without any reforms to protect the taxpayers. Like many Federal programs, this Federal program is well-intentioned, but it may very well be the best real-life example of moral hazard. We are told that the program is funded through insurance premiums, but the premiums are below the market rate, and so the program is eternally and consistently short of money. A 2014 report by the Government Accountability Office found the flood program collected $17 billion less than the market would have required. For all practical purposes, the flood program is insolvent. Just a few years ago, the flood program owed $30 billion to the taxpayers. Congress later cancelled $16 billion of that debt, but the flood program has not made any progress in repaying the taxpayers. The total now stands that the flood program owes $20 billion to the taxpayers with no way of repaying that money. Perhaps the greatest insult to the taxpayers, though, is the lack of true limits on this delinquent program. There are no limits on how many claims can be filed or how much money can be received for a policyholder. So it isn't that I have a $3 million flood policy. You could have a $3 trillion policy. There are no limits. There are also no limits on how big your house could be. You could have a $10 million house, a $20 million house, a $50 million house, and the taxpayers subsidize your house. Rather than encourage people to leave flood-prone areas, this program encourages people to stay and rebuild time and time again. In thousands of instances, the program encourages people to rebuild and rebuild and rebuild. According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, over 150,000 properties have been rebuilt over and over again. In fact, 25 to 30 percent of flood program claims are made by the policyholders whose properties have flooded time and time again. Over 2,000 properties have flooded more than 10 times. One home in Batchelor, LA, flooded 40 times and received a total of $428,000 of flood insurance payments--40 times. No one should keep rebuilding in a house that floods 40 times. But the record, if you can believe it, isn't Batchelor, LA. It is Virginia, where one home flooded 41 times and received payments of over $600,000, all subsidized by the taxpayer. Adding insult to injury, the Congressional Budget Office found that the flood program tends to benefit the wealthy and that 23 percent of the subsidized coastal properties were not even policyholders' primary residences. Realize what this program is doing. It is subsidizing insurance for the rich and famous for their beach houses. There are no limits. It subsidizes people who have $10 million homes to get subsidized government insurance. It is true. The government forces the taxpayers to pay and rebuild the summer homes of the rich. In fact, sometimes it seems that the flood program caters directly to the wealthy. Nearly 80 percent of the National Flood Insurance Program policies are located in counties that rank within the top 20 percent of income. Enough is enough. It is an insult to rob the taxpayers to give to the rich. This is why I offer an amendment that, if we could come to an agreement today, would require that the Federal program not insure your second house, not insure your beach house. If you live there--it is your only house--it will be included. If it is your second house, your beach house, it is not going to be included. And we would set a cap on the amount. Who in their right mind thinks we should be subsidizing insurance for $10 million mansions? It is crazy that anybody would think that is what we should do. I offer a compromise today. Extend the program. Let's keep the program. We will keep the program open. We won't miss a beat. But we will set some limits on the houses. So what I would like to start with would be a cap of $250,000. Those houses below 250 would be subsidized, would get subsidized insurance. Up to 250, you buy your own. Also my proposal would not allow you to use the insurance if this is your vacation home--if this is your secondary home. So, Mr. President, I ask the Senator to modify his request so that the Paul amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to, the bill as amended be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, the process is similar to what has been described but not exactly as has been described. The bill is sent out, everybody gets a chance to object. People who choose to object can come, that is also announced. The objections are announced, and we come to the floor. If the Senator wanted to work together on this, this could be modified today and someone else would have to come to object, and that is announced to all 100 Senators and often works that way. But, today, what we have is a situation where I am offering an amendment to reform taxpayer- subsidized insurance, and it is being rejected by one Senator, not by all Senators, not in place of all Senators. They have a chance to come, it has been announced, they can come and object to this if they wanted. But here is the thing, what I am trying to do is modify a program so that the average ordinary taxpayer does not have to pay for rich people's flood insurance for their beach houses. About half of the houses that are insured in this program that loses billions of dollars every year, that is $20 billion in the hole, about half the homes are worth $500,000 or more. Do you know any regular working folk that have $500,000 homes on the beach? No. If you have a $500,000 house on the beach, buy your own damn insurance. The taxpayer should not have to buy your insurance. So I would ask the Senator--we can do this today; there are other Senators on the floor; they can come running from hither and yon, and they can object to this--but I would ask the Senator, let's modify the program so rich people don't get their houses insured by the government and subsidized by the taxpayer. We can change the limits to $500,000. That would cut out half of the homes in the United States, half of the beach houses, half of the rich people in our country who are getting subsidized insurance. Make the limit $500,000. If we make it $500,000, the program will be half as big, and it will lose half as much money. Let's modify this program. So I would ask the Senator to modify his proposal with my amendment, and my amendment would say: You can't use the insurance for your second home, only your primary residence, and if you have a half- a-million-dollar mansion on the beach, guess what? You get to buy your own insurance. That is my modification, and I would ask the Senator to accept the Paul amendment that is at the desk.

Mr. PAUL. Reserving the right to object. What I am trying to find here, is there a compromise? Is there some level of rich person that maybe the taxpayer could say: Enough is enough; they ought to pay their own way? Is there some level of rich person's mansion that maybe the average, ordinary taxpayer should not have to subsidize their insurance? So we have tried a half a million, which is about half the homes the ordinary working class people in our country have to insure, why don't we try--if we can't do a half a million, let's try mansions of $750,000. You would say, well, how many are there? Twenty-five percent of the national Federal subsidized insurance are homes of $750,000 a year. We are not talking about ordinary people now, we are talking about rich, rich, very rich people getting subsidized insurance from a program that loses billions of dollars and has to be bailed out every year. We have a government with a $1.7 trillion deficit. It goes on year after year. Nobody does anything. Just reauthorize it. Today we can make a compromise. So I offer the Senator a compromise: If $500,000 is too cheap and you want to insure half-a-million-dollar mansions, will you, at least, modify it to exclude mansions of $750,000 or more? I think that is the least we can do. And I would ask unanimous consent to accept the Paul motion at the desk that indicates $750,000 as the limit for the insurance.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, reserving the right to object. It is certainly not my intention to denigrate rich people. I aspire to be one someday. But I don't aspire to ask for free stuff from the government if I ever become a rich person. Why would we subsidize insurance of rich people? Is there no limit-- is there no limit--is there no possibility of compromise on some mansion that is too large to be in this program? What about $10 million? We have tried $250,000. That was too little. You know, the insistence is we must insure these homes. We tried a half million. But the insistence is, no, everybody should get it. I don't think rich people need subsidized insurance. The program loses billions of dollars every year. We have tried 750,000, but apparently there still is this need and this desire to insure rich people's beach houses. Why don't we try one last time. We will try something that I think anybody could compromise to and anybody would accept, and certainly I wouldn't want to be the one justifying a program that gives people who have $10 million mansions insurance. Why not accept it and make someone on the other side support such a ridiculous policy? So my final proposal today will be to ask unanimous consent that the Paul amendment at the desk would exclude $10 million mansions from government-subsidized insurance. I think that is the least we can do. If we can get that compromise, it would bring at least some sense of sanity to this crazy program.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, reserving the right to object. Let the record show from this discussion today that the Senator has objected to any limits on taxpayer-subsidized flood insurance, any limits: 250,000; 500,000; 750,000, even 10 million. This is a program that loses billions of dollars every year. This is a program that can't work for the poor people because we have got so many rich people in it. Half of the homes in the program cost over a half million dollars. So this is a problem. This is a program that loses money every year, and the Senator is unwilling to accept any limits on this. There is this argument that somehow he is defending all the Democrat Senators who can't come here, but he could easily have said: I am not willing to object to this because these are reasonable proposals and force the Democrats to object to this. But he has taken this upon himself to defend the status quo, to defend the inclusion of $10 million mansions in this program. So I do object.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, reserving the right to object. We can today renew the National Flood Program and reform it. All it takes is for the Senators assembled here not to object to the reforms. I think that flood insurance provided by the taxpayer, subsidized by the taxpayer, shouldn't be for rich people or for their vacation home or their beach homes. Government has no business insuring rich people and their second homes. So I have some proposals to reform this system. We are being asked, though, to extend the flood program without any reforms, without any reforms to protect the taxpayers. Like many Federal programs, the flood insurance is well-intentioned, but it very well may be the best real-life example of a moral hazard. The program covers over 5 million policyholders and provides over $1 trillion in coverage. We are told that the program is funded through insurance premiums. But charging well below the market price of insurance and capping how much these rates can rise inevitably leads to shortfalls. A 2014 report by the Government Accountability Office found that the flood program collected as much as $17 billion fewer in premiums than what the market would have dictated. So when the program inevitably found itself in need of money, in theory, it borrowed that money from the taxpayers, not that the taxpayers had any choice in the matter. They took it. As they often are, they were on the hook regardless of whether they wanted to be or not. Just a few years ago, the flood program owed over $30 billion to the taxpayers. Congress later canceled $16 billion in debt, but the flood program has not made any further repayment to the taxpayers and now stands at over $20 billion in debt. In short, it is a subsidy. It is a gift. It is the taxpayers giving people who have homes along the coast subsidized rates, and we all have to pay for it. You might say: Well, maybe some poor people have no place to go; the government has a role in that, but a lot of these homes are people's second homes. I say we should limit the insurance to houses under a certain amount, modest homes. Some guy has a $5 million mansion on the coast of Florida should not get his insurance through the government. We shouldn't all have to pay for the insurance for some somebody who has a $5 million home. The taxpayers are expected to cough up money whenever the program needs it, but the program doesn't seem to be in a hurry to pay the taxpayer back. But perhaps the greatest insult to the taxpayer is the lack of true limits on the delinquent program. There are no limits on how many claims that can be filed and how much money can be received by a policyholder. Rather than encourage people to leave flood-prone areas, it encourages people to stay and rebuild. And, in thousands of instances, the program encourages people to rebuild and rebuild and rebuild. According to the PEW Charitable Trusts, over 150,000 properties have been rebuilt over and over again. In fact, 25 to 30 percent of flood program claims are made by policyholders whose properties flood time and again. There is no learning curve here. The government provides you something for a subsidy and you got your beach home and it keeps getting flooded and you just keep building if the government will pay for it. Have Uncle Sam pay for it. Have your neighbors pay for it. Over 2,000 properties have flooded more than 10 times. They don't move; they just keep rebuilding in an area that is a flood zone. One home in Batchelor, LA, flooded 40 times and received a total of $428,000 in flood payments. It would have been cheaper to buy him a new home in a neighborhood that doesn't flood. Can you imagine having to withstand the ordeal of your home flooding 10, 20, 40 times? Well, the taxpayer doesn't have to imagine paying for it because they are stuck with the bill. Adding insult to injury, the Congressional Budget Office found that the flood program tends to benefit the wealthy and that 23 percent of subsidized coastal properties were not even the policy owner's first house. We are talking about vacation houses that average, ordinary people who are suffering to go to the grocery store are having to pay for the insurance for some guy's vacation home. Yes, it is true. The government forces the taxpayer to rebuild the summer homes of the rich. In fact, sometimes it seems that the flood program caters directly to the wealthy. Nearly 80 percent of these flood policies are located in counties that rank with the top 20 percent of income. Enough is enough. It is an insult to rob from the taxpayer to give to the wealthy. That is why I offer an amendment that would require the flood program to cover only primary residences, no vacation houses, and establish a cap so that only modestly priced houses would be in it. I agree that there is a disruption. If it ends immediately, there would be a disruption. We can have an interim. My offer today, if accepted, if not objected to, would be: Today we fix this. We can stand right here today and fix this if there is no objection. We would continue the program only for primary residences, only under a certain amount, and it would continue. We would finally reform it. A long-awaited reform that people wanted for years could happen today if there is no objection. So, therefore, I ask the Senator to modify his request so that the Paul amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to; the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. PAUL. Reserving the right to object, the statistics really do tell the story. Twenty-three percent of all homes that are insured under this program, whether they are in Louisiana or any other coastal State, are second homes or vacation homes. I would be perfectly willing to negotiate what the actual price of the home is that can be in this situation, and I would offer to modify the amendment from $250,000 to $350,000 to allow more homes to be in. But saying the median is $433,000--well, the limit right now is infinite. There is no limit. You can have a $5 million vacation home, and the government is going to subsidize it. If we don't subsidize these houses, does that mean we are discouraging people who have wealth or have second homes? No. This has nothing to do with that. It is saying the taxpayer shouldn't subsidize rich people. The thing is, the reform will be objected to today, and there will not be any reform to this program, and these programs go on year after year because no one will bring to light what is actually happening here. If you were to ask the American people today ``Do you think we should be subsidizing flood insurance for people's beach house,'' I think they would say ``No. Buy your own damn insurance if you have a beach house. The government shouldn't be paying for it.'' So I object.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I rise to put the leadership of the House, the Senate, and the President of the United States on notice. I will not consent to any expedited passage of any spending bill that provides any more American aid to Ukraine. It is as if no one has noticed that we have no extra money to send to Ukraine. Our deficit this year will exceed $1.5 trillion. Borrowing money from China to send it to Ukraine makes no sense. It is not as if we have some sort of rainy day fund sitting around with trillions of dollars, a pot of money, and we are just going to send it to Ukraine. We are going to borrow it. When we borrow it and create new money to pay for that borrowing, we create the inflation that is plaguing our economy. Since the beginning of Russia's war on Ukraine, the American taxpayers have provided Ukraine with $113 billion. Over the 583 days of war, between February 24, 2022, and the end of the month, that averages $6.8 billion per month or $223 million per day. There are a lot of things that we need to fix in our country before we borrow money to try to perpetuate a war in another country. When will the aid requests end? When will the war end? Can someone explain what victory in Ukraine looks like? President Biden certainly can't. His administration has failed to articulate a clear strategy or objective in this war, and Ukraine's long-awaited counteroffensive has failed to make meaningful gains in the East. With no clear end in sight, it looks increasingly like Ukraine will be yet another endless quagmire funded by the American taxpayer. That is why public support for the war is waning. A CNN poll from August shows that a majority of Americans now oppose Congress authorizing additional funding to Ukraine. Now, there are those in the Senate who would refuse to listen to these voices, voices coming from a war-weary nation, and who would hold the Federal Government hostage by inserting $24 billion more for Ukraine. They are talking about saying the only way government stays open--the only way we avoid a shutdown-- is by shoveling more American taxpayer dollars to Ukraine. They are going to link keeping the government open with more money to Ukraine, and I am here to say that I am not going to agree to it, and I will not let them shut down the government simply because they want to send more of your hard-earned tax dollars to Ukraine. Either the American people fund an endless war in Ukraine or the ``uni-party'' threatens to shut down the government. This is a clear dereliction of duty, and I will not stand for it. Colleagues, as representatives of the American people, you should not stand for it either. The bill that comes before us should be about funding our government, not somebody else's government. I will not give consent to a bill that includes funding for Ukraine in keeping our government open. As elected officials, we have an obligation to pursue a foreign policy that advances the security and prosperity of our country. Funneling billions of dollars that have to be borrowed into the meat grinder of eastern Ukraine does neither. The longer this conflict continues, the greater the risk that miscalculation or purposeful escalation draws the United States into direct conflict with Russia. Russia's military may have a bloody nose, but Moscow still maintains the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. Let's not pretend that the U.S. involvement in this war comes without risks. If that is not bad enough, we lack effective oversight mechanisms to ensure that the hard-earned American tax dollars don't fall prey to waste, fraud, and abuse. For over a year now, I have been asking for a special inspector general to make sure they are not stealing our money. We have had one in Afghanistan, and his team of economists and technicians have overseen and found billions of dollars' worth of waste that they have saved. We need the same thing in Ukraine, a special inspector general to make sure they are not stealing our money. When that has come before a vote in the Senate, the majority party here says: No, we just want to spend the money. We don't care. Some Republicans have gone along with this as well, and they have voted against an inspector general. It is a terrible abuse of our spending authority to spend money overseas in a war and not make sure that they are not stealing it. So in addition to the colossal cost of the war, we end up paying a corruption tax. Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries on the planet--maybe second only to Russia. Corruption runs deep through Ukraine, and there is plenty of evidence that it has run rampant since Russia's invasion. As President Zelenskyy landed in New York earlier this week, we learned that corruption concerns in Ukraine's Ministry of Defense resulted in the firing of six Deputy Defense Ministers. This comes 2 weeks after the firing of Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, who was removed after it was discovered that the Ministry of Defense had mishandled military contracts. Last month, Zelenskyy fired all 24 regional military recruitment chiefs because they were ``involved in illegal activities, including enrichment.'' Last October, we learned that U.S. shipments of grenade launchers, machineguns, rifles, bulletproof vests, and thousands of rounds of ammunition were ending up in the hands of criminal gangs and weapons traffickers posing as humanitarian organizations. And what did the Senate do? They voted against a special inspector general to make sure they are not stealing our money. What are we doing? Is this fair to the American people? Millions of Americans are struggling each day to make ends meet. Millions of Americans are struggling to provide for their families and put food on the table. Can we honestly look our constituents in the eye and tell them that this is a good investment of their dollars? Some say the war in Ukraine is a fight to save democracy, but those who say that need to be honest with themselves. Ukraine is far from a shining example of democracy. And while the strain of war can make for questionable government actions, we have to live with them when the war is over. For all the platitudes about America supporting democracy and making the world safe for democracy--the Woodrow Wilson advocates among us-- the biggest recipient of American welfare, Ukraine, canceled its next Presidential election. You are telling me we are sending $100 billion to a country that is not going to have elections? We are going to send $100 billion to a country that now has, what, a President for life? They say: Well, we could, but it is difficult. Does anybody remember the American Civil War, where 600,000 people died and yet we didn't miss an election? They canceled the Presidential election. We should cancel our aid as a response. This is not the only concerning development in Ukraine. Despite Zelenskyy's charm offensive this week, his actions also deserve scrutiny. Citing national security concerns, Zelenskyy has banned Orthodox churches oriented toward the Russian Orthodox Church and has ordered Ukrainian law enforcement to raid churches and arrest priests. He has banned the political opposition. How do you have a democracy if you are not going to have elections and you ban the opposition? He suspended 11 political parties, including the Opposition Platform--For Life, the second largest party in Ukraine's Parliament and the one which held 44 seats. He has attacked free speech by banning opposition media and increasing his government's regulatory power over journalists. It hardly sounds democratic to me. Earlier this year, he signed into law a bill that allows Ukraine's state broadcasting council to regulate all media in Ukraine. The council can impose mandatory orders, fines, restrict content from search engines, and even outright suspend media outlets without a court decision. It hardly sounds very democratic to me. If these actions sound like the actions of an authoritarian regime, if you suspect these do sound like an authoritarian regime, you are right. This past July, a Swiss intelligence report observed ``authoritarian traits'' in Zelenskyy, as he tries to push the mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, out of contention for Ukraine's 2024 Presidential elections. Citing martial law, Zelenskyy stated that those elections will not take place. Martial law, no elections, banning opposition parties, this is where your $100 billion has gone, and they are not done. We don't have the money. The money is being borrowed. We borrow the money from China to send it to Ukraine. In 2021, Zelenskyy fired multiple government officials, including his Prime Minister, for investigating a Ukraine oligarch who just happened to be a key backer of Zelenskyy's Presidential campaign. The United States placed sanctions on this oligarch for his involvement in significant corruption, and earlier this month, he was finally arrested. Clearly, Ukraine and the regime are not paragons of democracy. But this is not just about what Ukraine is or is not with respect to government. This is about American interests in our national security. Every day this war continues is another spin of the roulette wheel with another chance of it stopping on Armageddon, and we are paying for the privilege. We cannot continue with business as usual. We cannot continue to put the needs of other countries above our own. We cannot save Ukraine by dooming the U.S. economy, and we certainly cannot save Ukraine by fighting a war with Russia. As we go further and further into debt, we become weaker. It is not just that this is not helping our national security; the very threat to our national security is our debt. The more we send money overseas, the more we deplete our munitions, the worse things get. No matter how sympathetic we are to the Ukrainian people, we must put the American people first; and to that end, I encourage my colleagues to oppose any effort to hold the Federal Government hostage for Ukraine funding. I yield the floor.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, the Senate still mandates a COVID booster vaccine for pages. The Senate COVID vaccine mandate for pages continues despite the fact that the Senate voted 83 to 11 to repeal the military COVID vaccine mandate. So why in the world would we continue a mandate on pages that we have repealed for our soldiers? Is there any science to support continuing this mandate? The answer is an emphatic no. The science has been clear since the early spring of 2020. Healthy children are not seriously affected by COVID. In fact, several large studies show that healthy children are rarely hospitalized and that deaths from COVID in healthy children are virtually nonexistent. Dr. Martin Makary of Johns Hopkins describes a large, nationwide study in Israel that found that the risk of COVID death in people under 30 with two vaccines was essentially zero. A nationwide study from Germany showed zero COVID deaths among children over 5 who had no comorbidities. Even the head of the WHO, Soumya Swaminathan, concluded that there is no evidence right now that suggests healthy children and adolescents need boosters. Yet here we are, with Democrats desperately clinging to COVID vaccine mandates for young people who have essentially zero risk of dying from COVID. Common sense should prevail, and the Senate should repeal this mandate, just as we did for our young soldiers. We shouldn't allow politics to infect and cloud commonsense judgment. The vaccine committees that make recommendations for vaccines actually don't recommend COVID boosters for young, healthy individuals. The FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee voted to limit COVID vaccines to adults over 65. They wanted, because of the risk profile of the COVID vaccine, to limit it to people who were at risk for dying from COVID. A CDC vaccine panel also voted against recommending boosters for young, healthy individuals. But these committees that have lifelong scientists on them who voted not to advise the booster vaccine for adolescents were overruled by a political appointee, Biden appointee Rochelle Walensky. Dr. Paul Offit, who is the director of the Vaccine Education Center and professor of pediatrics and infectious disease at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia, wrote that ``a healthy young person with [two COVID vaccines] is extremely unlikely to be hospitalized with covid, so the case for risking any side effects--such as myocarditis--diminishes substantially.'' Dr. Offit, a lifelong proponent of vaccines, even advised his own son not to get the COVID booster. The argument against mandating COVID boosters on young, healthy people is not just that they are unnecessary but that the COVID boosters may actually harm young individuals. Reports of heart inflammation or myocarditis after COVID vaccines have been consistent and worldwide. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association Cardiology examined 23 million people across Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden and found that the risk of myocarditis increased with COVID vaccination, particularly after the second dose. This is exactly why several European countries, including Germany, France, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, restrict the use of COVID vaccines among young, healthy people. Some countries, such as South Africa and England, recommend only one COVID vaccine to avoid the risk of myocarditis. A study in the Journal of Medical Ethics similarly found about 1.5 cases of myocarditis per 10,000 COVID vaccines but with 80 percent of the kids who suffer from a heart inflammation still having symptoms 3 months later. Drs. Prasad and Knudsen looked at 29 studies across 3 continents and also found an increase in myocarditis after COVID vaccines. The studies reviewed by Prasad and Knudsen showed a little more than 2 cases of myocarditis per 15,000 vaccines. Even the CDC admits that myocarditis occurs about once per 15,000 vaccines. Dr. Tracey Beth Hoeg looked at the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System and found 1.62 adverse cardiac events per 10,000 vaccines. Now, that doesn't sound like a high number, but we are talking about a perfectly healthy kid. How would you feel if your perfectly healthy young football player or band member is given the vaccine and comes home with a heart inflammation? It is actually diagnosed with rising heart enzymes the same way that a heart attack is diagnosed. Hoeg found that the risk of myocarditis was five times greater than the risk of hospitalization from COVID. So you are asking yourself, well, could my kid go to the hospital or could he get a heart inflammation? Both are rare, but the chance of your kid getting a heart inflammation from the vaccine is five times greater than your kid being hospitalized from COVID. The Vaccine Safety Datalink similarly found a little over 2 cases of myocarditis per 15,000 vaccines. This is across the scientific literature, across all the continents, across the world, and is a consistent finding that even our government admits to. But the Democrats want submission. They don't want you to have the choice to keep your kid safe and make a decision whether or not your kid, who may well have already had COVID, needs yet another vaccine. Why are we forcing these kids to do something that I would say is against medical advice to be a page in our program here? The Senate continues to look away from all the evidence of myocarditis. In each of these studies, the risk of myocarditis increases with each vaccine. About 90 percent of the myocarditis or heart inflammation occurs after the second vaccine. Yet, inexplicably, the Senate pages are being mandated to take three vaccines. There are all kinds of compromises. You could say one; you could say two; but three--you are increasing the risk with each successive vaccine. Not only are three COVID vaccines unwarranted for young, healthy individuals, this mandate actually risks their health. It is the height of malpractice to subject young, healthy kids to three COVID vaccines. In fact, nowhere in the examination or discussion of whether they should have the vaccine is there any discussion of whether they have had COVID. So what is a vaccine? It is meant to simulate having had the infection. Shouldn't they tell us the data on children or adults? If you have had the infection, what is your chance of getting it again? What is your chance of going to the hospital? What is your chance of dying from COVID if you have already had it? They won't tell us for adolescents because the answer is zero. Originally, the logic of advocates for the COVID vaccine mandates argue that the vaccines were not necessarily for the children but to protect their parents and grandparents. This argument now holds no water, as even the zealous advocates of mandates, such as Biden's CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, admit that COVID vaccines do not anymore prevent transmission. So the side of the people promoting these mandates admits they don't stop transmission. Now, they may well still reduce hospitalization and death if you are in the target category--the elderly or those with health disease--but for young, healthy kids, there is no effect other than to increase their risk of a heart inflammation. A Danish study confirms that by December 2021, the COVID vaccine's effectiveness was less than 10 percent. The virus had mutated on, and the vaccine had not been changed. A study from January 2022 of over 1.2 million children in New York shows that the vaccine effectiveness was 10 percent. It wasn't stopping transmission, it wasn't stopping them from getting the disease, and it wasn't protecting their health. No serious scientist now argues that COVID vaccines stop transmission--no one. Yet here we are, with Democrats saying: You are not smart enough to make your own decisions. We will make these medical choices for you. When we look at the effectiveness of the COVID booster, we ask, what is the science toward whether or not a booster is effective? Isn't this booster now formulated against the newer variants? Yes, the booster is directed against newer variants, but about every 3 months or so, the virus changes enough that the latest vaccine is no longer effective. In fact, the CDC has largely given up testing the boosters and the new vaccines for effectiveness. Instead, in pushing for all children to get COVID booster vaccines, the CDC doesn't argue that the booster stops transmission; it doesn't argue that it prevents hospitalization or death. So what argument does the CDC have for continuing to promote boosters on our children? The CDC readily admits the vaccines don't stop transmission in any group. As to hospitalization and death, the CDC can't show any evidence that the booster lessens hospitalization or death among young people. Why? Because the rate is already virtually zero. It is hard to prove that the booster is helping anything when no healthy kids are dying from COVID. The CDC can't prove that the booster helps because it is impossible to improve upon the already low incidence of severe disease among young people. In fact, when the CDC approved the COVID booster for children, they didn't even argue that it was effective or that it prevented anything; what they argued is that the kids will make antibodies if you give them a vaccine, which means absolutely nothing. I have challenged Anthony Fauci on this, on the lack of effectiveness. An antibody response simply means that the vaccine generates an immune response but tells you nothing about disease prevention. It tells you nothing about preventing hospitalization. It tells you nothing about infectiousness. It tells you nothing about death rate. In fact, you could give every kid in the country 100 different COVID boosters, and they will make antibodies each time. That doesn't mean they need 100 boosters. What they have done is they have given up on trying to prove that the booster has any effect on their health, and they just want you to shut your eyes, be quiet, and do as you are told. This is the Democrat policy. This is the Democrat medical policy for you: Shut up and do as you are told. Take the injection. We don't care if your kid might get sick. We don't care if you might have a choice. We don't care if you have any say in your kid's medical care. In a free society, no one should be forced to undergo a medical procedure against their will. In a free society, no one should be forced to receive an injection into their body that they do not wish to have. The Democratic Party's support for medical choice seems selective and inconsistent. What ever happened to my body, my choice? Vaccine mandates for children, who are at virtually no risk for COVID death, create vaccine hesitancy among the public. The public is well aware that healthy children do not die from COVID, and they rightly have resisted COVID vaccines on their children. But the vast overreach of vaccine mandates actually creates among the public a tendency to doubt and disbelieve the government's overall vaccine message. Because of the dishonest, over-the-top mandates on children, the public wonders if the government messengers are downplaying other risks. It is, however, true that the vast majority of people at risk for serious COVID have indeed already been vaccinated. Over 97 percent of people over 65 watched the news, learned of their friends, watched their neighbors, found out who is dying, and they took the vaccine voluntarily. If vaccine advocates want the public to continue to listen to public health pronouncements, then they need to end the nonsensical vaccine mandates on our kids. A good start would be ending the ill-advised COVID booster mandate for our Senate pages. So, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Rules and Administration be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 336; further, that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, the accusation has been made that my purpose is somehow to undermine vaccines and have people question vaccines. But, obviously, the arguments were not listened to because in no part of my arguments or any of my public statements have I ever said anything in general that vaccines are bad. In fact, as a physician, I am most fascinated by the development of vaccines. The stories of the development of the smallpox vaccine and the polio vaccine were all tremendous scientific successes, and there continue to be. My argument is simply for medical freedom. Now, there has been a disingenuous argument made by the other side. They say that I am proposing a mandate, that this will be a legal mandate and that there is no mandate. If you want to be a page, there is a mandate. Now, they say you can just choose not to be a page, but this affects the rest of our society. So if your kid gets into Yale or Princeton or Harvard or the University of Chicago, many of those schools follow the lead of the Senate, follow the lead of the Senate doctors, and say your kid has to have three vaccines. But if you look at the evidence carefully that I have laid out, you will find that the scientific studies across all continents, across the world, across the United States--studies of millions of people--show that the vaccines have some downside and danger, particularly for children. Not once have I said that the elderly shouldn't be vaccinated. In fact, for my 92-year-old and 86-year-old in-laws, we suggested and tried to get them the vaccine as soon as we could. My wife was vaccinated. Now, I chose not to be vaccinated because I had the disease in the first couple weeks of COVID and had immunity. And the studies turned out--and these are studies of over a million people in California and New York. The studies turned out to show that actually having had the disease does give you immunity, and it is actually twice as potent as the vaccine. When I say that, the left gets apoplectic, and they say: Oh, my goodness, you are saying people should just get sick to get immunity. I am not saying that at all. But I am saying that, if you have gotten sick, you have immunity. And we should be honest with people because some people have had two vaccines and they want to know: Do I need a third one? Well, let's release the data on people who have had two vaccines plus COVID, and tell us how many people are subsequently getting it again, going to the hospital, or dying. Wouldn't you want to know that before you take your third, fourth, fifth, six, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth vaccine? Release the data. But, in a free country, we make these decisions. The other side argued that, well, what if one of the pages has health conditions. No part of our resolution says anything about them not getting a vaccine. Anybody in this country can freely get a vaccine. If their parents and they decide to get a vaccine, by all means, do it. Nothing in my resolution would prevent pages or anyone else from getting a vaccine. What I am arguing for is freedom. As far as the idea that this will be permanent and unwavering and won't be able to recognize what new diseases come upon us, every new disease requires reevaluation--every new disease. It doesn't mean the concept of freedom changes. What would happen is everyone will still evaluate this. The evaluation of this vaccine when it first came out at the end of 2020, early 2021, was different than it is now, frankly. It is also different if you have had it. People should just be honest with you. I am not saying don't take a booster or that you can't take a booster. Go take all you want. I am saying the government's job should be to give you information, and I am saying the opposite of what he actually made a point of. Vaccine hesitancy or people undermining the belief that vaccines work comes from people who tell you things that are dishonest and untrue. There is no science--and I am adamant about what I am saying here. There is no science that the booster for your children reduces the transmission of the disease. There is no reduction in your child's ability to get COVID if they take a COVID booster--zero. The other side accepts this. Rochelle Walensky, Biden's nominee, accepts this--no change in transmission with the vaccine. How about hospitalization and death? There is still some data that people at risk for this can have reduced hospitalization, not transmission. They can still catch it, but maybe reduced hospitalization and death. Most of this data came in the previous iterations, when we had the wild variety in 2020. Then we got Delta. Then we got Omicron. But we have now advanced two or three iterations out. And the one thing we are lucky about that the government should be honest with you is that with each successive iteration, with each successive mutation and variant, the good news is this: It has become less deadly. It has become less deadly because the virus is now less deadly but also because the community has more immunity. So immunity has developed; the virus has evolved to become less deadly, and we are in a much better situation. But government medicine and government health policy shouldn't be about telling Americans what to do. It should be about giving information. The government should never be in the business of mandating, whether it is masks or vaccines or any of this other stuff. You wear it. You do it if you want--your body, your choice. But there is a lot of conflicting data here, and you really need to be informed to make an informed choice. There is some data the government is still preventing from being released so you can't tell. With regard to the masks, we now know that there was a meta-analysis of 78 different randomized controlled studies called the Cochrane analysis, and they found that masks did not prevent the transmission in public. In fact, what they found was there was no evidence that more significant mandates or more significant use changed the transmission at all. This had been the accepted conclusion by all of the medical world before 2020. We had never advised masks in public for influenza because with influenza, the size of the virus--the same as the size of COVID-- is much smaller than the pores of the mask. We found people really cannot wear the masks without touching them. We found that air goes around the mask. But, ultimately, we looked at public, large populations, and we found that they just didn't prevent the disease. Does that mean you can't wear a mask? No. Wear a mask if you think it makes you more healthy. In the hospital, they said: Well, doctors wear them. Of course we do. If you go into a COVID patient's room--and I volunteered in the hospital after I got COVID. I got it very early, and I felt comfortable going in there because I had already had the disease. But wearing a mask made sense to go into the room of someone with COVID. We wore the N95 mask because it actually, if worn properly, will protect from the particles. We also washed our hands, wore gloves, and wore gowns. And as we came out, we took off the gloves, the gowns, and the masks and threw them away immediately. And we did it again into the next patient's room. Done properly, there can be some--it still doesn't work completely because, still, a lot of doctors and nurses got COVID, but it is probably worth a try. In the public setting, it just doesn't work, frankly. Nobody can do that. A lot of people don't know this, but the N95 mask--in which, actually, the pores are small enough--works with something called an electrostatic charge. And after you breathe into it for about 4 hours, the moisture from your exhaled breath actually changes the electrostatic charge, and it is not as effective in preventing the ingress or egress of the COVID virus. But, really, what we are arguing here--there can be two sides to every argument. What we are arguing about, what we are discussing is who should make the choice. The Democratic majority believes that they should make the choices for your healthcare and that kids belong to them. This is the same argument we had in education in Virginia, when you had the parents in Northern Virginia saying, ``We want to be involved in our children's education,'' and you had the Democratic nominee for Governor in Virginia come out in a debate and say that kids don't belong to their parents; the school will make these decisions; it is none of your business; stay out of it. That is what they are telling the pages and their parents--that it is none of their business, their healthcare. And it could be different for any of them. If a page had a kidney transplant or has leukemia and their parents want them to have the vaccine, it is probably a reasonable thing to do. But if they are young and healthy and have no medical problems, it turns out, if you look objectively at the data, that they have five times greater risk of getting a heart inflammation than they do of being hospitalized for COVID. These are the statistics. People should just be aware of that. And good, honest people could still disagree on this. But what happens in a free country is you make your decision. You make your decision of which doctor you take them to. If you don't appreciate the opinion of that doctor and you don't trust that doctor, you go to another. And sometimes, it is complicated. Sometimes, mothers and fathers don't agree. But who wants to give a political party the power to make these decisions for your children? How would you feel if your young, healthy football player or band member or choir member got the COVID vaccine and then has a heart problem that permanently impairs them for the rest of their life, when they had zero chance of dying from COVID and virtually no chance of being hospitalized? Wouldn't you want your government to release the data on what it means if your kid has already had COVID? Let's say your kid has already had one or two vaccines and they have already had COVID. What does that mean? Don't you think having COVID might replace the need for more vaccines? Your immunity is also broader. The vaccine gives immunity to one protein on the surface, the S protein on the surface of the cell. When you actually get infected, your body destroys the cells that have the virus in, and, as the virus empties out its inner contents, nucleic capsids and nuclear proteins, you actually get a broader immunity. Now, the left misinterprets this. The left says: You want everybody to get sick, and people are going to die. I don't want anybody to get sick. All I am telling you is people should be given the information. Most of us have had COVID. What does it mean? What does it mean if you have had two vaccines and COVID? What does that mean toward your future? What does it mean toward your need for more vaccines? But, ultimately, what we are talking about here is freedom. What we are talking about is who should make the medical choices: the government, the Democratic Party, or whether or not we should leave this to parents and their kids. And I, for one, say that we ought to have medical freedom. In a free country, every individual should be free to make those decisions.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to Democrats' mandates that forced our young Senate pages to be vaccinated three times. In a free society, no one should be forced to take an injection; no one should be forced to have a surgery; no one should be forced to submit to a medical procedure--particularly a medical procedure that was approved under emergency-use authorization. Democrats' support for medical choice when it comes to vaccines appears to be inconsistent and selective. But I fear they won't be persuaded by any arguments towards liberty, so I would like to direct the majority of my remarks to the actual science about whether or not adolescents should have to be forced to have three COVID vaccines. Initially, there were arguments made saying: We must forcibly vaccinate these kids or they will infect the older folks, the antiquarian Senators. But it turns out that argument fails because the science in the end showed that the vaccine didn't prevent transmission of the disease. In fact, in August 2021, CDC Director Rachel Walensky admitted for COVID-19 that the vaccine does not stop transmission: Our vaccines are working exceptionally well . . . But what they can't do anymore is prevent transmission. So the government, the proponents, those for the mandates argue: Well, we have to do it; it will stop the disease and we won't have any more spread. Well, it turns out that wasn't true. The vaccine does not stop transmission. With that, it should have been the end of the arguments for mandates, because you are no longer talking about your health versus someone else's health. The only argument that those who are for the mandates argue now and those who argue for taking the vaccine is that it reduces your health risk--the individual who chooses to get vaccinated. However, when you look at the data, that appears only to be true for targeted populations. If you are at risk for being hospitalized or dying from COVID, over age 75, immunocompromised, have other health concerns, there is some argument for a vaccine. But for a young, healthy person, there is no logical argument. If you look and ask yourself will taking a booster reduce transmission, the argument is no. Whether you are at risk or not, it does not reduce transmission. If you are at risk for hospitalization or death, it may well reduce that. But the young pages we are talking about are not at risk for that. In fact, when we look at it, throughout Europe, there was a study of 23 million folks--young folks--and they found the death rate was zero. Israel looked at this: Death rate zero for young, healthy people. Germany looked at this, ages 5 to 17: Death rate for young, healthy people, zero. And people say, well, what is the big deal? The vaccine is not that big a deal. You know, certainly, it is not going to hurt them. It has to be better than having COVID. Well, it turns out when you weigh the risks versus the benefits for a particular age group, it is actually not true. If you look at the risks of side effects from the vaccine-- and the main worrisome side effect that we are concerned with is an inflammation of the heart called myocarditis or pericarditis--a study by Prasad and Knudsen looked at 29 different studies and found that the incidents, averaged out, was a little over 2 per 15,000. The Vaccine Safety Datalink looked at this again and found also it was about 2, 2.5 out of 15,000. Even the CDC admits that the risk of myocarditis for young people is about 1 in 15,000. Tracey Beth Hoeg looked at a retrospective study of those who have been injured by vaccines and found the incidence of adverse cardiac events was about 1.62 per 10,000. So it's not like every kid is going to get myocarditis, but you have to weigh the incidence of 1 or 2 or 3 out of 15,000 getting a serious disease that could affect their health or even debilitate them. The risks and benefits are different for every individual. That is why in a free society, the individual or the individual and their parents make this decision with their doctor; sometimes they get more than one opinion. But we don't mandate--in a free society, we don't just tell them: Do what you are told or else. But that is what is happening. It is not just happening here in the Senate--although, the Senate is setting a terrible example for the country. Many universities are still doing this. It is actually medical malpractice to require these vaccines for kids. It turns out when you look at the incidence of myocarditis, over 90 percent of the heart inflammation that occurs in young people occurs after the second dose. You can get rid of 90 percent of--admittedly, not a real common problem--but you can get rid of 90 percent of the risk of this vaccine by not requiring more than one. But we are not talking about just the second dose, where 90 percent of the inflammation comes from the second dose. We are talking about Senate Democrats--because Republicans would like to get rid of this--Senate Democrats are requiring three vaccines. There is absolutely no scientific evidence. In fact, when this went to the committee studying this, the first committee that looked at this was the FDA Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, and Dr. Paul Offit sits on this committee. They voted not to advise giving the booster to anyone unless they are over 65. They said: Let's look at the risks and the benefits. The disease COVID appears to be affecting the older generation. They are more at risk. We can put up with some risk for the vaccine; but for the kids, it is not worth it. The committee voted. So then it went from the FDA's committee to the CDC's vaccine committee. Guess what? They voted against recommending the booster also. They said, reserve the booster for those who are at risk, for at- risk populations. So how did we get a booster mandate? How did we get a booster advice from the CDC saying everybody from the age of 2 months should get a booster? How did we get it? The CDC political appointee of the Biden administration overrode the FDA vaccine committee and overrode the CDC committee. Dr. Paul Offit was and still is on the Vaccine Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, and he voted to reserve the booster for those at risk. He is the director of Vaccine Education Center and professor of pediatrics in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He is not someone who is opposed to vaccines. He spent his whole life advocating for vaccines. He is on a committee that has approved the COVID vaccine. He just simply said the vaccines should be targeted, and it should be extended and advised--not even mandated but advised--for people over 65 but not for kids. His committee voted no. The FDA committee on vaccines voted no; don't give the vaccine to kids. The CDC committee on vaccines voted no; don't give it to kids. What do Senate Democrats want? Put their heads in the sand and make a political decision because they love central authority to mandate that these kids get three vaccines, even though the science goes against all of it. Paul Offit, when asked whether or not his son who was 24 would get the vaccine, he said: He shouldn't get the vaccine. So we are stuck with a situation where there is no evidence and no historical precedent for mandating this kind of treatment. There is no historical precedent for mandating that the Senate and Senate Democrats intervene between the doctor of these children and making their own medical decisions. It is taking away the idea that risk and benefit are debated and discussed based on your risks and benefits. So what we find is that advice that actually probably is good, if you are over 65, to consider getting a booster--although it still should be voluntary--we are going against the best advice to actually promote that these kids get a vaccine that may well be harmful to them. The CDC has admitted it doesn't stop transmission. But then you want to ask yourself, what are other countries--what are they doing around the world? They looked at 23 million people, ages 12 and up, in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. What did they find? They found that after two doses of the mRNA COVID vaccine, the risk of myocarditis was higher than compared with those who were not vaccinated. This is exactly why much of Europe is now limiting the vaccine and not giving the vaccine to certain age groups. What they found in these studies is that adolescent males, particularly between the ages of 12 and 26, are at a heightened risk for this. In fact, Tracy Beth Hoeg, in her study, looked at the possibility of adverse cardiac events versus a possibility that someone their age could go to the hospital over a 120-day period. They found that the possibility of an adverse cardiac effect was about five times greater than any of these kids even going to the hospital. But what we did find is--and this is why several countries have actually limited this--Germany, France, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway now restrict the mRNA vaccine and don't advise giving the vaccine to this age group, particularly don't advise giving them three vaccines. A study in December in the Journal of Medical Ethics found about 14.7 cases of myocarditis--actually, 1.47 cases per 10,000 in ages 18 to 29. They also found that those who had the heart inflammation, 3 months later were still suffering from the inflammation of the heart. Dr. Offit, who sits on the committee that voted against recommending this for adolescents and for children, wrote in an op-ed that ``[a]healthy young person with two mRNA vaccine doses is extremely unlikely to be hospitalized with covid, so the case for risking any side effects--such as myocarditis--diminishes substantially.'' That is why they did recommend against the third vaccine, which is exactly the opposite of what the Democrats are doing. They do and want to mandate three vaccines on these kids. As one editorial put it last year, if being boosted becomes a prerequisite for participation in normal life, the vaccine's diminishing efficacy means the boosting campaign will never end. Dr. Marty Makary, professor of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, wrote in the Wall Street Journal: The U.S. government is pushing Covid-19 vaccine boosters for 16- and 17-year-olds without supporting clinical data. A large Israeli population study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine . . . found that the risk of Covid death in people under 30 with two vaccine shots was zero. Germany showed zero deaths among healthy kids ages 5 to 17. There is no scientific rationale for mandating three COVID vaccines for healthy kids. Even World Health Organization Chief Scientist Dr. Soumya Swaminathan said last year that ``there's no evidence'' that suggests healthy children and adolescents need booster shots--no evidence. This is the head of the WHO. These are not opponents of vaccines. These are people saying that there is no evidence and that it might harm these kids to get vaccinated, and yet Democrats will vote today, the lot of them, to say that basically we must force these kids to get three vaccines or they can't be up here. Now, you might say: Well, gosh, we are just so worried and we don't know everything and so what do we do? Well, how about all the other people who work up here? At any point in time, the other 10 or 15 people in this room, are they required to get vaccines? No. We are only requiring one group subset to do it. These kids have to get three vaccines. They are the least likely to get sick from COVID. They get COVID, and they don't even know it. The vaccine doesn't stop them from getting COVID. They have naturally acquired immunity as well. If you don't ask yourself what that means, you are not paying attention to any science. Wouldn't you want to know whether they have had it? Even if you really thought a vaccine mandate was great, what if I have already had COVID? Do I need three more vaccines? Because I have already had COVID, I developed natural immunity. Dr. Martin Kulldorff of Harvard Medical School says that mandating people who have already had COVID that they still get vaccinated makes zero sense from a scientific point of view, and it makes zero sense from a public health point of view. A study in Lancet supported this view, stating that current evidence does not appear to show a need for boosting in the general population. That is why the FDA committee and the CDC committee both voted against advising it. It is not only bad advice; it is a horrific mandate. It would be one thing if you want to give advice to tell people that we think it is a good idea, but it is another to tell them they have got no choice. Do you want to participate in the elite program here in the Nation's Senate? You can't come unless you do what Democrats want, submit to three vaccines, even though it may increase your risk of heart inflammation. They don't care. Mandates are fine. A study at Lancet looked at this and said that it was a bad idea. It says: Currently available evidence does not show the need for widespread use of booster vaccination in populations that have received an effective primary vaccine or who have already been infected with the disease. When we consider the rules for the pages, we ought to ask: Will these policies be expected to continue indefinitely? The virus mutates about every 3 or 4 months. You have got a brandnew virus. You have got a virus now you didn't have 3 or 4 months ago. The vaccines also lose their potency. Are you going to mandate until the end of time? It is also not the same. Are you going to stick your head in the sand and say this is 2020? No, the virus in 2020 actually was more lethal. One of the good things about viral evolution is they typically evolve to become less dangerous and more transmissible. You can catch COVID by looking at somebody wrong, but fortunately it is not as deadly as it once was. Are there still some people dying from COVID? Yes, people who are at high risk. If you go to a doctor and you have chest pain and you are 12 years old, he doesn't or she doesn't treat you the same way as if you would go in and you are 60 years old. If you walk into an emergency room and you are 15 years old with chest pain, they usually might think of asthma or other problems but typically not a heart attack. People are treated differently based on their age. Doctors think of what is common in that age group. If I go in with chest pain, they are going to do heart enzymes. They are going look for a heart attack. That is the first thing they are going to look for. But they don't treat everyone the same. This is blindly what we are being told by the Democrats; that everybody is the same, submit or else. But it is not just the pages whom they are hurting here. It is not just the pages that they are increasing their risk for this heart inflammation. They are setting an example and other universities are doing it. Still, tens of thousands of young American kids are being forced to take three vaccines. You say: Well, they are not being forced. They can choose not to go to Yale or Harvard. What if your dream had always been to go to one of these schools? You have to give up your medical freedom and your good judgment just simply so you can do exactly what Democrats tell you to do? Multiple scientific studies have shown a heightened risk of this heart inflammation or myocarditis for children and teenagers after taking the vaccine. Ninety percent of the myocarditis comes after the second or the third vaccine. If you simply went to one vaccine, you would get rid of 90 percent of the problem. And yet, they are still insisting that we do something that is actually medical malpractice, that these kids be forced to take three. Multiple countries have begun restricting the vaccine for certain age groups. Germany, France, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden all have restricted Moderna's vaccine for young people. Norway, South America, and the UK all chose to recommend only one dose of Pfizer due to the risk of cardiovascular side effects for boosters in children. And yet what we would get today is not a discussion, not we are open to compromise, no maybe the science has changed and we will reevaluate it; you will get from the Democrats: No, get three boosters or you can't come to the Senate. Why is the U.S. Senate choosing to ignore the risk other countries have acknowledged when mandating these vaccines for young people who are in peak physical condition? What happened to a belief in medical choice? What happened to a belief in medical freedom? Public health measures should be backed up with proof that the benefits outweigh the burdens, and if you want to treat everyone the same--you want to say that teenagers are the same as 75-year-olds--that is not good medicine; that is not good science. There is no evidence that when it comes to vaccination and booster mandates, especially for teenagers who as a group are less vulnerable to the virus than any Senator, that is why I am asking unanimous consent today that we pass my resolution to get rid of this ridiculous and unscientific mandate. So, therefore, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 336, which is at the desk; further, that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, in no way, shape, or form have I opposed vaccines for those who are at risk. Back when my in-laws, who are 92 and 86, first became eligible for the vaccine, the first thing we did was call the health department to see if we could get them a vaccine. Unfortunately, the health department wouldn't answer the phone, but they did have a useful message. They said, if we knew anybody who was not wearing a mask, we could report them to the police, but they didn't do anything about vaccines. But I have never been opposed to vaccines. In fact, a lot of the vaccine hesitancy that we have in our country comes from the unscientific, unfounded, and half-baked ideas of the Democrats on this. When Democrats tell you that we should force 15-year-olds to be vaccinated--because that makes no sense and because their parents know it makes no sense and they know it makes no sense--that leads to the distrust of the government on other fronts. So I mentioned earlier--and this, apparently, was lost and not necessarily received by the other side--that the FDA committee, in looking at boosters, advised not to give boosters to teenagers. Now, they hide behind that by saying: Oh, there is no mandate. Ask these kids if there is a mandate. Ask their parents. Ask the media. Call them up. Ask them: Is there a mandate? No, they can't be here unless they have three vaccines. There is a mandate. We have the chance to undo the mandate, and that is what the vote would be about. The FDA didn't even advise giving it. The FDA didn't even advise giving it to them, but they definitely didn't advise mandating it. The CDC said the same thing. The only reason we got any kind of approval for this booster is that the political appointee of the Biden administration overrode both of the vaccine committees in order to approve it. Normally, you would have to prove efficacy--a reduction in hospitalization. Well, transmission would be one. The Senator came to the floor and said this is a vaccine-preventable disease. Well, this isn't a vaccine-preventable disease because it doesn't stop transmission; it doesn't stop you from getting it. But here is the thing: If you look at kids and boosters and you want to prove whether they are good for kids--and this is all we are talking about. We are not talking about the elderly or the infirm or people who have risk factors. We are talking about these kids. If you look at these kids and you ask, ``Do they have any risk factors or are any of them dying?'' we will refer to some statistics here. Well, the statistics aren't accurate. If you look at healthy kids--there was not one healthy kid. The answer wasn't a few. It was zero. In Germany, zero healthy kids died. In Israel, zero healthy kids died. A handful of unfortunate cases of children in our country did die. I think it was a little over 100 kids in a country of 330 million, and, sadly, every one of those cases had a severe medical illness and a problem. I think it is an abomination that they want to say, ``Oh, we are the only ones who care about the million people who died,'' when we are the only ones who have been trying to figure out where this virus came from. For the last 3 years, I have been asking every day: Did this virus escape from a lab? And not one Democrat will stand up and say: I will help you find out. We will look at it together. Every Democrat has said: We don't care. We don't know, and we don't want to know where the virus came from. But if it came from a lab, maybe we should quit funding this research. Should we quit sending our money to China, to a lab that operates in an unsafe manner? That would be a way to show you care about a million people. But this is, make no mistake, a mandate on these young pages. It is wrong. It is malpractice. It shouldn't happen. There is no scientific evidence, and the government's own vaccine committees don't advise it. Yet Democrats, today, have said they don't care about the pages. They don't care about their parents. They don't care about their medical privacy. They don't care about their ability to discern the risks and benefits of having a medical procedure. So medical choice be damned. Democrats are going to tell you what to do, and just remember that. Just remember that they don't care at all about your own choice about your own body.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, the Flat Earth Society is champing at the bit to bring back masks even though the Cochrane analysis has looked at 78 randomized controlled studies and shown that masks didn't stop transmission, didn't stop hospitalization, and didn't lessen deaths. In other words, the masks on a population level had no influence over the spread of COVID. Again, the Flat Earth Society cannot listen and absorb these facts. They want the masks to come back. In addition, the Flat Earth Society also wants to mandate three COVID vaccines for kids despite no evidence that COVID vaccines reduce transmission, hospitalization, or death for adolescents. Yet, to this very day, Senate pages are required to get three vaccines in order to participate in the program. I rise today out of a desire to protect the health of the young men and women who serve as Senate pages. I think we can all agree that the Senate wouldn't function very well without the pages. The very first page was a 9-year-old boy named Grafton Hanson. He was appointed by Daniel Webster back in 1829. In those days, the pages had to refill the inkwells and clean out the spittoons. Things have changed a little bit around here since then. The work isn't quite as messy anymore, but it is still a high-pressure job for a high school student. From day one, our country's response to the pandemic made the comfortable more comfortable while the working class had to keep on working. And now, in the Halls of Congress, a privileged class can choose whether to get vaccinated while an underclass must abide by COVID dictates. Think about it. The antiquarians of the Senate are not required to be vaccinated, but the young, healthy people--at zero risk for death from COVID--are being forced to be vaccinated three times. To become a Senate page, you must get a COVID-19 booster shot, but study after study demonstrates that for young and healthy people, the risks posed by the vaccine are greater than the risk from COVID. Let me be clear about that. This is for young, healthy adolescents; the facts are different. If you are elderly or infirm or have other risk factors, the risks of the disease outweigh the risks of the vaccine, but for young, healthy people, none of them will die from COVID. Almost all of them have either had a vaccine or had the disease or both, but we are mandating that they have three vaccines. Study after study shows that it makes no sense to mandate COVID vaccinations for teenagers who are healthy and that such a mandate actually may be dangerous to adolescents. A study published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association Cardiology examined 23 million people ages 12 and up across Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. It found that after two doses of mRNA vaccine, ``the risk of myocarditis was higher within 28 days of vaccination.'' So they had a risk of developing a heart inflammation within 28 days of the vaccination compared with the group who was unvaccinated and that the risk increased with each successive dose. So there is a risk, particularly for the ages between 16 and 24, of an inflammation of the heart, and it increases with each successive dose. So if you are going to mandate three vaccines on a group of kids who have zero risk of dying and the vaccine doesn't prevent transmission, protects no one, all you are doing is adding a risk to their health. And for goodness' sake, in a free country, couldn't we let them make their own medical decisions? This is exactly why European countries, including Germany, France, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, restrict the use of mRNA vaccines for COVID. There are rules for young people. Yet the policy for the Senate pages blindly commands three vaccines for young, healthy people. A study published in December in the Journal of Medical Ethics found that per million third doses, booster doses, of COVID vaccine, up to 147 cases of myocarditis may be caused in males ages 18 to 29; up to 80 percent of those diagnosed with vaccine-induced myocarditis or pericarditis continue to struggle with cardiac inflammation more than 3 months after receiving a second dose. Yet, remember, this is a group of people who have zero deaths--zero deaths. There are no deaths of young, healthy people from COVID, and we are mandating that they take three vaccines. We are supposed to be the leaders in this country. What science are we looking at? What science are we obeying? We are reacting in an emotional way. We are promoting hysteria and leading with the wrong example. Recently, Dr. Vinay Prasad and Dr. Benjamin Knudsen published a review in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation that examined 29 studies across three continents. Six of the 29 studies showed that after two doses of mRNA vaccine, more than 1 in 10,000 males between the ages of 12 and 24 would experience myocarditis. Think about it. To be a page up here, you send a perfectly healthy young man or woman up here, and then you give them the risk of a serious heart inflammation over a disease that is evolving every 3 or 4 months--such that the vaccine is good for about 3 or 4 months, until it is no longer good--for a disease that was never deadly for children. Initially, the argument was: Oh, we have to stop the children from transmitting it to the old people. It doesn't work that way. The only thing even the proponents of the vaccine argue is that the individual vaccinated may have a reduction of hospitalization and death, but those statistics only hold for at-risk populations: the elderly, the immunocompromised, the ill. For young, healthy people, there is no health advantage to being vaccinated, and there is actually a health disadvantage the more vaccines you give them. It is actually medical malpractice to continue to mandate three vaccines, whether it is in the Senate or in a university, and unfortunately, the example that is being set here in the Senate is being followed in other universities around the country of mandating three vaccines. A study published recently in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that regardless of sex, among those ages 5 to 39, myocarditis or pericarditis occurred in 1 in every 50,000 after a first booster. With statistics like that, why would we think it is a good idea to insist on boosters for our young, healthy pages who are in their early teenage years? We are taking the rights of the individual, their parents, and their physicians to make a decision based on their risk factors and their individual parameters, and we are making a blanket rule that says they need to get vaccinated. Yet study after study is showing that the risks of the vaccine exceed the risks of the disease for this particular age group. It is the height of malpractice to subject young people to the greater risk of vaccination simply to satisfy mandates designed to protect bureaucrats from accountability. Now, I am told that the Democrats will object to this today. The Democrats will stand up and say they know better than your parents. The Democrats will stand up and say they know better than these kids' doctors and that, by golly, if you want to be on the Senate floor, you have to have three vaccines. Well, guess what. I have got zero. I am standing right here. I have got zero vaccines. I had COVID in the first month of the disease. And, actually, I would have gotten vaccinated, but I got the disease early on, and then all the evidence pointed toward immunity being gained from having the disease. So I didn't bother getting the vaccine. Members of my family got the vaccine. We recommended that my elderly in-laws get the vaccine. But the thing is, we made that choice. And so here I sit without a vaccine, and I won't wear a mask because they don't work either. Yet then we are telling them. In a month, are we going to be putting them back in masks? The Democrats want everybody in masks. They want the hysteria to return. Why? Because they don't think any of us are smart enough to make our own decisions. They want to make the decision for us. The common man be damned. The working class be damned. Americans be damned. The Democrats are going to tell you to wear a mask, and the Democrats are going to tell you how many vaccines to get. Well, the vaccine goes out of style. The virus evolves away from the vaccine within a couple of months. How many mandates are there going to be? Why not six mandates? Why not 12? Why not mandate the newest booster that may be more effective than the last booster? Which one are we mandating? They just have to get three vaccines. But it goes against the science. Let's say you even grant the Democrats that there might be some science on the other side of it. Good. Let the individual make the decision. Whatever happened to the idea of individual choice? Whatever happened to the idea of choice with regard to your body and your medical decisions? The hypocrisy is astounding. Recently, Drs. Vinay Prasad, Tracy Beth Hoeg, and Ram Duriseti shed light on some of the science surrounding this, on some of the efforts to manufacture studies that artificially bolster the case for mandates. In a letter published this July in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Prasad and his team question an Israeli study that the FDA and our government--Democrats--are trying to use to justify forcing people to take boosters. This study, they said, shows a 90-percent reduction in death if you take the COVID booster vaccine. And they kind of scratched their heads, and they said: Well, almost nobody is dying anymore because the virus has become less dangerous as it has evolved. More people have immunity, either natural or vaccine immunity. To have a 90-percent reduction in a death rate that is already very tiny just seems a little bit unbelievable. So they looked at the data from the study, and what they found was that, actually, there was a 90-percent reduction in the booster category for all diseases: cancer, a variety of--diabetic, heart attacks, you name it; people died 90 percent less of the time if you were boosted. It is like: Wow. A booster cures heart disease; it cures diabetes; it cures cancer. No. It turned out the study was flawed and that the group that had been boosted died 90 percent less of the time just because you have got to select it out for a group that was very healthy versus a group that was less healthy. The study was flawed, and it took scientists with the courage to stand up to the New England Journal and say: Look at the data. The original authors of the data finally released and said: Whoops. We made a big mistake here. Our study doesn't really prove what we said it proved. When the FDA approved boosters for kids, did they show that it reduced transmission? No. When they approved vaccines for adolescents, did they show that it reduced hospitalization? No. Did they show that it reduced deaths? No, because no kids are dying from COVID. You can't be less than zero deaths. How did they approve the vaccine at all for adolescents? How did they approve the booster? They said: If we give them a booster, they make antibodies. I confronted Anthony Fauci on this, and I said: Well, I can give you a hundred vaccines. Every individual I give it to will make antibodies. That doesn't prove you need it. You need to prove that it does something. If you give them three vaccines, will they transmit the disease less? No evidence of it. Will they be hospitalized less? No evidence of it. Will they die less often? No evidence. There is no evidence other than the laboratory tests saying they make antibodies but no evidence that they need to make more antibodies. But one thing we know: If you are a young person who has had COVID recently--even the CDC admits this: If you have had COVID within 3 months and you take a vaccine, you have a profound risk of getting an overly exuberant immune response and having the myocarditis because you have had the vaccine in the middle of an immune response that you are making against the disease. Yet do you recall anyone at one of these pharmacies that are all handing out the vaccine and pushing it--have you had any example of them saying: Well, have you had COVID recently? Maybe you should wait 3 months. No. Nobody is paying any attention to natural immunity. Nobody is paying any attention to the natural course of the disease. And nobody is really paying any attention to the danger the vaccine presents to young people. This is not a benign situation. This is a situation where the Democrats are in favor of mandating a vaccine that puts their health at risk. We are telling kids all across America: You cannot come up here unless you get what the Democrats tell you is the best thing for your health. And even though there are some scientists who say that it may actually imperil your health, you don't get a choice; and you can't be part of the nationwide Senate program, you can't be part of this elite group, unless you submit, unless you bend the knee to the Democrats, unless you say: My body belongs to the Democratic Party; my body will be injected with whatever the Democrats tell me I need to do because I don't have control over my medical decisions; the Democratic Party does. This is obscene, and the Democratic majority should be embarrassed that they are here today telling us that American parents and American families are not smart enough to make their own decisions. In the letter, Dr. Prasad and his colleagues wrote that the ``[u]nderlying health plays a substantial role in COVID-19-related mortality'' and ``[i]nclusion of mortality not related to COVID-19 in all observational . . . studies would provide important context.'' So, in other words, it looks like the studies that may have shown any indication that boosters might help were incorrectly performed, but the vast majority of the studies have shown no effect on transmission, hospitalization, or death. They do not exist. I would love for the Democrats, when they stand up and talk about forcing kids to do this, if they would present the studies for us that show why or show that the booster vaccine actually aids in reduction of transmission, hospitalization, or death of adolescents. Even from within the government, though, some have resisted the ever- expanding booster mandates. In 2021, the Director and Deputy Director of the FDA's Office of Vaccine Research and Review--not someone who is opposed to vaccines, someone who has been involved with the development and promotion of vaccinations his entire career--resigned, two of these guys resigned, citing White House pressure to approve third doses for all adults, writing damning op-eds critical of the FDA's subsequent decision to do so. One of these op-eds ran in the Washington Post and was coauthored by Dr. Paul Offit--once again, not an opponent of vaccines, not an opponent of the COVID vaccine, a professor of pediatrics and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, a longtime advocate of vaccines who has been involved in the mainstream pro-vaccine community--objected. As a member of the FDA's Vaccine Advisory Committee, Dr. Offit did not support widespread boosting. He and two former FDA officials wrote that ``healthy young person[s] with two mRNA vaccine doses is extremely unlikely to be hospitalized with COVID, so the case for risking any side effects--such as myocarditis--diminishes substantially.'' Dr. Offit even advised his own son not to get a booster because he was already well protected against severe disease. So here we have advocates of the vaccine, mainstream scientists who work in the vaccine community, who have been promoting vaccines for the health of the community. These are not people opposed to vaccines, saying they would not give a booster to their child; they would not give a third COVID vaccine because the risks of the vaccine outweigh the risks of the disease. This really encapsulates the debate here. Your healthcare is about you. You are not a statistic. The Democrats somehow feel you are a cog in their wheel, and you are just supposed to do what everybody does and do as they say. But really, your healthcare decisions are based on your risks of getting COVID, your risk of dying, being hospitalized, or transmitting it. It is about you. That is why you make the decision. Instead, they want a blanket mandate. And by doing it to the pages here and forcing them to submit to this, what they are doing is setting a terrible example for the country. One editorial put it this way last year: If being ``boosted'' becomes a prerequisite for participation in normal life, the vaccine's diminishing efficacy means the booster campaign will never end. What does that mean? The virus is evolving. It is like the flu. It is changing every 3 or 4 months. The vaccine becomes outdated within 3 or 4 months. So if you are at risk, by all means, keep getting the updated vaccine. We are not even mandating the updated vaccine; we are mandating a booster and often a booster that is a year or two old and has no effect at all on the vaccine, even for people who are susceptible to this. But we need to let the individual kids and their parents make this decision. Dr. Marty Makary is a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He wrote in the Wall Street Journal that ``[t]he U.S. government is pushing COVID-19 vaccine boosters for 16- and 17-year-olds without supporting clinical data. A large Israeli population study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine . . . found that the risk of COVID death in people under 30 with two vaccine shots was zero.'' So there is no science behind this. A large study of the entire country of Israel, which keeps great records on this, found that kids that had been vaccinated twice had zero deaths. Germany showed the same thing--not just a few, not a small number, zero deaths among kids aged 5 to 17. There is no scientific rationale for mandating three COVID vaccines for healthy kids. Even the World Health Organization's chief scientist, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, said last year that ``there's no evidence right now'' that suggests healthy children and adolescents need booster shots. Even the WHO--one of the most pro-vaccine mandate groups you can find in the world--has said they don't recommend booster shots. Dr. Martin Kulldorff of Harvard Medical School says that mandating people who have already had COVID still get vaccinated ``makes zero sense''--zero sense--``from a scientific point of view, and it makes zero sense from a public health point of view.'' A study in the Lancet supported this view, stating that ``[c]urrent evidence does not . . . appear to show a need for boosting in the general population, in which efficacy against severe disease remains high.'' What does that mean? Why do they have efficacy? Why can they fight it? Because they are young and healthy, and the disease seems to have a predilection for the elderly. They are young and healthy, but they have already had COVID. They have immunity. And many of them have all been vaccinated. But we aren't demanding even just basic vaccination; we are demanding three vaccines. And what we know is that with each individual vaccine, the risk for heart inflammation goes up. It is less if they have one. It is less if they have two. It is even more, though, if you get to a third. When we consider the rules for the pages, we ought to ask: Will these policies be expected to continue indefinitely? COVID is with us forever. COVID is now the new flu. Fortunately, it has become less deadly over time. It was quite deadly in 2020, and each successive evolution of the virus has made it less deadly. The death rate is dramatically reduced. Even at its peak, the death rate was about .3 percent, about three times greater than the seasonal flu. It still meant a million Americans died either from COVID or with COVID, but it is now lessened in severity. Are they going to continue to tell us how to make our healthcare decisions forever? Are Democrats so insistent that they know better than everyone else that we will be beholden to bending the knee and asking their permission to live? Are we going to ask permission whether or not--they will come to us and say: To participate in life, you have to be vaccinated three times. There is no science to back this up. When it comes to vaccines, although they can benefit the vaccinated person if that person is in a risk category, in Denmark, vaccines were not shown to have any impact on household viral transmission or secondary attack rate. Even the proponents of the mandates will admit, if forced to admit, the vaccines don't stop transmission. The only thing they can hang their hat on is there is reduced hospitalization, but that only exists if you are in a category of increased risk. Over a certain age, over a certain weight, have some diseases, immunocompromised, there is some evidence of reduced hospitalization if you have immunity. But actually, it is less so with each subsequent one and really hasn't fully accounted for the natural immunity that people get from having the disease, which still needs to be studied. Multiple scientific studies have shown, though, that there is a heightened risk of myocarditis--heart inflation--for children and teenagers after taking mRNA COVID vaccine. That is why multiple countries began restricting it for certain age groups. Germany, France, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden all restricted Moderna's vaccine for young people. Norway, South America, and the UK all chose to recommend only one dose of Pfizer due to the risk of cardiovascular side effects for boostering kids. But what we are going to find out today is the Democratic Party doesn't care about the science, doesn't care about choice with regard to your medical decisions, can't even allow a debate whether you get one, two, or three vaccines, but it is going to insist that, to be part of the U.S. Capitol, the U.S. Senate Page Program, you must bend the knee to the Democratic Party and do what they say about your vaccines or you can't be a participant. Why is the U.S. Senate choosing to ignore risks other countries acknowledge when mandating these vaccines for young people who are in peak physical condition? Public health measures should be backed up with proof that the benefits outweigh the burdens. There is no evidence of that when it comes to vaccination and booster mandates, especially for teenagers, who as a group are less vulnerable to this virus than any Senator. That is why I ask unanimous consent that the Senate pass my resolution to end all COVID-related mandates for pages who serve in this Chamber. Mr. President, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to S. Res. 332, which is at the desk; further, that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon table.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, the argument has been made that we should leave these decisions up to a doctor. Well, the thing is that in America we don't appoint like a doctor as dictator. We don't appoint one doctor. You get a choice. You get to choose your doctor. If you don't like your doctor's advice, you think your doctor's advice is invalid, such as it is in this case, you go to another doctor. In a free country, the decisions are made by individuals, and each individual will assess their risk. Now, the argument has been made that there is overwhelming evidence on the record. That is just, frankly, untrue. There is no evidence--and I don't say that lightly--zero--there are zero studies in any of the scientific literature that show that a booster for adolescents reduces transmission, hospitalization, or death--zero. They only approved the booster to allow you to make the choice of using it by saying that you make antibodies. Making antibodies proves that vaccines work, which no one disputes. Vaccines work to induce the production of antibodies. But the question is, If you have already had COVID, do you need three vaccines if you are a 15-year-old kid? The answer in all the literature is, you don't need that vaccine. What we found today--he says: Oh, this isn't partisan. Certainly, it is partisan. Do you see any Republicans over here objecting? The Republicans unanimously support getting rid of this mandate. The Democrats are objecting because the Democrats don't think that individual Americans are smart enough to make their own decisions. The Democrats don't think that these kids and their parents and their doctors can make their decision. They don't believe in choice when it comes to medical decision making. They believe that they know better. But in this case, it isn't just a matter of taking something that is ineffective; it is mandating a vaccine that threatens the health and well-being of these kids--not just a vaccine, mandating three vaccines with no mention of even whether the kids have already had COVID, which is essentially another inoculation. So this is a disappointing day, but this is consistent with what we have seen time and again, whether it is having a nationwide emergency mandating that you wear masks in school, masks on planes, vaccines here, vaccines there. This is a desire by the majority party to control your life, to control your medical decision making because they know better. They want to beg off and say this is about the science. I recited 15 different studies for them. They didn't recite one study because no study exists saying that three vaccines for kids reduces hospitalization, transmission, or death. There is no science. Large, nationwide studies of this problem have gotten a dozen countries to say we shouldn't be giving three vaccines to kids. Half of Europe won't allow you to do it. They won't allow the mandates. The argument is made, oh, well, we have to do what everybody is doing in schools. Even the colleges--90 percent of the colleges aren't requiring this. This was a bad mandate from the beginning. Most of the colleges have woken up and understand now, one, that this is America and you ought to be able to make your own medical decisions, but, two, that the science points towards booster vaccine mandates actually being a threat to the health and well-being of adolescents. I am very disappointed, but I think this illustrates where we are in America, where one party thinks they are smarter than every American, smarter than every individual, and they will make your medical decisions for you. I rest my case.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I rise today to object to the quick passage of H.R. 4470, which seeks to extend the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards Program. How could anybody be against that? I am actually for it. We should have terrorism standards. But--you know what--we always had these before 9/11. How did it work before the government got involved? Well, companies had to insure things. If you had a $100-million electric plant and it was at risk for sabotage or a fire or a disruption to the community, you had insurance, and insurance required that you have a fence. I mean, these things happen. It is not as if safety for our utilities and public chemical plants didn't exist before 9/11. So there are ways that the marketplace would take care of this. This measure, though, which would reauthorize this regulatory program for another 2 years, I think is being rushed through the Senate without due consideration or, really, any consideration at all. The Homeland Security Committee has jurisdiction over the program, yet we have not had any hearings to discuss this program or its effectiveness. This is part of the problem of government is we tend to reauthorize things without ever examining whether they work, what works, what doesn't work. Some programs might need more money; some programs might need less money. And we might ask ourselves: Do we have any money? We are $31 trillion, $32 trillion in debt. We borrow about $1 trillion every year. It is easy to be for stuff. Everybody has got something good. Everybody is for something, but where does the money come from? We haven't really had any hearing to discuss this program or its effectiveness since the last time it was authorized, nor has the committee considered any legislation to reform the program. This program is a regulatory program. It is hundreds of regulations, and it was established to prevent the misuse of hazardous chemicals. But it also fails to understand that every company has a self-incentive to protect hazardous chemicals that is built into the nature of the way they do business. Facilities that store certain quantities of designated chemicals of interest, though, under this legislation, must undergo a risk assessment inspection every 2 years. If it is not reauthorized? It has been going on for 20 years. My guess is that the vast majority, if not all, of the utilities and chemical plants in this country have undergone this. My guess is, if the program didn't exist, they would still all have fences and barbed wire and protections against terrorism because they want to protect their investment. The requirement, though, through government places a burden on business, impeding their potential growth and creating unsurmountable barriers to entry for those who find the regulatory compliance too cumbersome and expensive to even attempt to break into the sector. This is why, a lot of times, big businesses like regulations. Regulations become a formidable barrier to new companies coming into the business. Why not have a ton of regulations, sort of like banks. All the banking regulations--guess who likes the banking regulations: the big banks, because they can hire more compliance officers. Your local bank in your town can't afford to do it. So the local bank gets gobbled up by the bigger bank because of regulatory burden. The monetary resources required to implement and maintain these standards are substantial, and the cost implications impact not just private companies but also the Department of Homeland Security. The United States is trillions of dollars in debt. We cannot continue to just pour money into nonessential government programs. We should have a discussion of what are the private incentives for people to protect their chemical plants, to protect their utilities. There is a long history of this. In fact, it was the history of our country until fairly recently. The Department of Homeland Security has a consistent track record of creating duplicative programs. Over the past 12 years, the Government Accountability Office--the GAO--has documented over 1,100 cases of duplicative programs created by Congress. Everybody has a great idea--we are going to fix this--but they don't ever take time to look up and find out that somebody had the idea 3 years before, and they already created a program to fix this. So sometimes we have as many as 80 different programs to fix a problem that has already been fixed previously 80 times. It should come as no surprise to any of us that our government has grown into a $6.5 trillion leviathan, and this body seems more interested in passing bills than understanding the contents of the bills, the programs, or whether the programs are working. We saved, though, over $550 billion by removing just half of GAO's identified duplicative programs. Five hundred and fifty billion dollars was saved by taking the time to find out that we already have other programs doing what the new program proposes to do. I have already expressed a number of concerns about this program, but what should alarm us the most about this reauthorization is that GAO already found much of this program to be duplicative of other Agencies in a report from 2021. That is why I will be introducing and attaching to this bill and letting the bill go, frankly, if we can agree today to attach a small bill, but I think it could have profound implications over government. This is called the Duplication Scoring Act. What would happen is, every time someone gets a genius idea how they are going to fix your life or fix your business with another law, there would have to be a duplication score, and government would come forward and say ``Well, we have 32 programs that already do the same thing'' or ``We have 32 programs that aren't working that do the same thing.'' It would be what a government should normally do before creating a new program--find out if we already have existing programs. So I will be asking consent to pass this bill. I will let the program continue, even though I think it has many problems, if we will add a duplication scoring system to all programs in government so we can review whether they already exist and are working. This program would be produced for each bill. I think all of us can agree that there is no point in passing a bill that already exists in another fashion or already has Agencies that do the same job. Before we unknowingly pass a thousand more of these duplicative, fragmented programs, I urge my colleagues to support my amendment, which would continue the program, allow it to be reauthorized, but at the same time begin having a duplication score on every new proposal. So I would ask the Senate to modify the current request; that my amendment, which is at the desk, be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. PAUL. I object, Mr. President. I object.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. I call up my amendment No. 438 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. PAUL. The United States sent $113 billion in aid to Ukraine. It is impossible to send this much aid this fast into war-torn Ukraine without waste, fraud, and abuse. Yet we are told by the departmental inspectors general that they have not substantiated any cases of fraud. That is not good news. Zero cases mean our oversight is failing. What our government can't find was uncovered by Ukrainian journalists who uncovered a scandalous contract to buy food for soldiers at grossly inflated prices that led to the resignation of Ukraine's Deputy Defense Minister. Fortunately, a successful independent oversight body already exists. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction conducted hundreds of audits in Afghanistan and saved over $3 billion for the taxpayers. We already have a war-tested inspector general in Afghanistan who is ready and able to take on the task of oversight of aid to Ukraine. Let's not waste any more American treasure. A vote for my amendment is a vote for real oversight.

Mr. PAUL. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the following interns from my office be granted floor privileges until August 18, 2023: Kate Micallef, Sydney Windhorst, Linden Shelby, Spencer Woodall, and Chloe Truett.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. How much time do I have remaining?

Mr. PAUL. Yes.

Mr. PAUL. Could I ask unanimous consent to have one additional minute?

Mr. PAUL. It is unconstitutional for the legislature to change the Congress. While the Constitution provides a role for both the President and the Senate when entering a treaty, it is silent regarding how to exit a treaty. When the question of treaty determination first arose in 1793, President Washington and his cabinet endorsed the view that the President's Executive power included the ability to unilaterally terminate a treaty, withdraw from the treaty obligations, permitted the U.S. to maintain neutrality in a war between France and Great Britain, and it was done unilaterally by President Washington. The power to enter treaties is found in article 2, which vests the President with the Executive power. Unlike a legislative body, the President can act with unity and dispatch, precisely the qualities needed to negotiate a treaty. And so the Founders grounded this authority in article 2. Passing this amendment is tantamount to altering the Constitution, because the amendment would authorize the Senate to infringe upon the Executive powers of the President. The Senate has no voice when exiting a treaty. This would amend the Constitution and is unconstitutional, and that is a good thing. The Founders wanted it to be difficult to commit the United States to international obligations and easy to get out. We should follow the Constitution and vote ``no'' on this amendment.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 222, and I ask unanimous consent that the debate of 4 minutes be equally divided.