The Daily - Biden’s Bet on Vaccine Mandates

Episode Date: September 13, 2021

As recently as a month ago, President Biden appeared to be skeptical about imposing coronavirus vaccine mandates. Now that skepticism has given way to a suite of policies that aim to force the hands of the unvaccinated.What has changed?Guest: Jim Tankersley, a White House correspondent for The New York Times. Sign up here to get The Daily in your inbox each morning. And for an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: President Biden’s new vaccination efforts reflects the continuing and evolving threat the coronavirus pandemic poses to the economic recovery.Will Mr. Biden’s measures turn back a surging pandemic? The answer: Yes, in the longer term.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, behind President Biden's decision to mandate vaccinations for 100 million Americans and why the political backlash it's already unleashing could ultimately work to his benefit. I spoke with my colleague, White House reporter Jim Tankersley. It's Monday, September 13th. Jim, the last time that we talked about government mandates for COVID-19 vaccines on the show, We talked about government mandates for COVID-19 vaccines on the show. President Biden was in a very different place. He was deeply skeptical of them and unprepared to order them.

And that was really only a month and a half ago. So what has changed? I think what changed is the president has grown increasingly frustrated. It works. It's safe. It's free. It's convenient. He embarked on this months-long campaign to try to convince holdouts that no, it's safe to get vaccinated. It's the right thing to do. The vaccine saves lives and it could save yours or your child's. He had a lot of public events where he came out and implored people to get vaccinated. Folks, there's no reason to leave yourself vulnerable to the deadly virus for one single

day more. Encouraging states to use federal money to pay people to get vaccinated. Like, they tried every possible way the White House believes. Please. To nudge. Please get vaccinated. please, to nudge the unvaccinated into getting vaccinated. But the White House has come to believe they've hit their limit on voluntary vaccination. They're not going to persuade many more people to get vaccinated. And they are seeing the consequences of sort of hitting that wall. The big one, the one that the White House says is driving this shift is public health. We are seeing mounting death rates across the country from the virus at a time when we were supposed to be getting through the pandemic. But there are other consequences, too.

The economy is suffering from the Delta wave. There are other consequences, too. The economy is suffering from the Delta wave. We saw job growth slow in August in industries that are sort of most exposed to COVID. Consumers are pulling back on spending in places like restaurants and airline travel. The consumer confidence has crashed. So in general, the recovery is at risk from this new phase of the pandemic, all of which culminates in the president's poll numbers, which have sagged in recent months, partly because of what's happened in Afghanistan. But a big driver of them appears to be even former strong supporters of the president growing disenchanted with this handling of the pandemic. So those political forces, economic forces,

and primarily the public health force come together for a president who's frustrated. And the White House has basically asked the question, what else can we do? All of this frustration comes to a head in the speech that the president gives on Thursday. Good evening, my fellow Americans. And the president walks out and we see a very different Joe Biden when it comes to the pandemic. This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. And it's caused by the fact that despite America having unprecedented and successful vaccination program, despite the fact that for almost five months, free vaccines have been available in 80,000 different locations. We still have

nearly 80 million Americans who have failed to get the shot. Instead of pleading with people to get vaccinated. And a distinct minority of Americans, supported by a distinct minority of elected officials, are keeping us from turning the corner. He takes a very sharp aim at unvaccinated people. We've been patient, but our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has cost all of us. Right, there was none of that conciliatory tone that I think of when I think about how President Biden has talked about this pandemic. He is flat out saying, a bunch of you, and it's not that many

of you, but it's enough. You're literally ruining everything for the rest of us. Yeah, he is really coming out and says, basically, our time of waiting for you to do what we believe is the right thing is over. And now we're going to do everything we can to make you do it. As your president, and now we're going to do everything we can to make you do it. As your president, I'm announcing tonight a new plan to require more Americans to be vaccinated to combat those blocking public health. Well, let's talk about that. Describe in detail the proposals that he laid out in the speech.

The headline of what he proposes is a sort of suite of mandates for workers in various places to get vaccinated. So that starts with federal workers and millions of federal contractors that do business with the government. If you want to work with the federal government and do business with us, get vaccinated. No ifs, ands, or buts. There's no ability to get out of that with testing or whatever. You have to get vaccinated. My plan will extend the vaccination requirements that I previously issued in the health care field. He then also requires COVID vaccinations for some 17 million health care workers who work in health care settings and hospitals that basically take federal money. We'll be requiring vaccinations on all nursing

home workers who treat patients on Medicare and Medicaid because I have that federal authority. This is leveraging a financial relationship between those hospitals and the federal government to basically say, you need to have your own vaccination mandates, which to be clear, many of those places already have. But he's saying, you know, I'm going to set a consistent standard if you are one of these, you know, health care providers who does business with the government. Gotcha. But the big one, the really big one, is a mandate that covers private sector workers in large companies.

We're going to protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated co-workers. And what exactly does that mandate say? Well, it says that if you are a company with more than 100 workers, you have to require vaccines of your employees or require them to be tested for COVID once a week. This is not about freedom or personal choice. It's about protecting yourself and those around you. And otherwise, you are afoul of federal safety regulations. And this applies to

probably 80 million workers by the White House's estimate. Yeah, it's just a huge swath of the economy. God bless you all and all those who continue to serve on the front lines of this pandemic. And may God protect our troops. Get vaccinated. It feels like the mandate for federal workers or workers who rely on federal money, as sweeping as those are,

is very intuitive because the president either controls their job or controls their money. They're essentially his workforce. But this mandate for workers at private companies, as you're hinting at, that feels very novel and it feels unexpected. So what is the basis for that? It almost feels like a bit of a stretch for the president.

What it is, is a law from 1970 that set up the Occupational Safety and Health Administration inside the Labor Department called OSHA, which often when you read about OSHA, it's because it's investigating workplace accidents or chemical spills. It's charged with keeping workers safe and enforcing safety standards in the workplace. But what the president is directing OSHA to do is to implement a requirement basically that says, look, there's a huge threat to safety in your workplace. That threat is the Delta variant. And there's a remedy for that threat. There's a safety precaution you can take, which is to get everybody vaccinated. And so you need to take that safety precaution in order to have a safe workplace. Got it. So he's using existing workplace regulations to require vaccinations as a condition of a healthy workplace.

Exactly. I'm curious, though, how enforceable the private sector mandate really is by OSHA. How exactly is this supposed to work in all these hundreds of thousands of offices with more than 100 people? I think the big way it's supposed to work, at least initially, is just by prodding people to act on their own, whether it's employees or employers or both. OSHA doesn't have nearly enough inspectors, regulators to go to every large job site in the country and see if they're implementing this. It's a lot like putting up a new sign for a

reduced speed limit. You probably don't have the police resources to have a car, a police car, on the road every day checking every driver's speed. But just putting up the sign is going to be enough to get a lot of people to slow down. And that's what the White House is betting on here, is that in the early days, weeks of this announcement, businesses are going to react and say, hey, we want to comply with the law, so you all need to get vaccinated or you all need to subject to tests. Essentially, there will be self-policing by companies and employees. And they are just hoping that the sheer fact of the announcement motivates a lot of people and businesses to act. But the question is, how big will the backlash be? Will the White House succeed in ramping up vaccinations from this, or will they just turn

a whole bunch of people and businesses off from the idea entirely? We'll be right back. So Jim, what has the backlash been in the few days since Biden announced these sweeping mandates? Well, in the immediate aftermath of the announcement, it was swift and angry from conservative corners. Listen, this is not a power that is delegated to the federal government. This is a power for states to decide. Particularly conservative lawmakers. In South Dakota, we're going to be free and we're going to make sure that we don't overstep our authorities. A lot of governors of red states came out and...

When you have a president like Biden issuing unconstitutional edicts against the American people, we have a responsibility to stand up for the Constitution and to fight back. ...vowed to fight the president on this. Yeah, I mean, OSHA regulates toxic chemicals and, like, unsafe scaffolding. They don't regulate epidemics. So this is obviously an issue that energizes the conservative base. It's just a political distraction. It's probably unlawful, and it's almost certainly counterproductive. And so lawmakers, including members of Congress, have been very agitated about it

for what they see as violation of the Constitution and abuse of his powers as president. And what exactly are these conservative lawmakers arguing is wrong with the president's mandates here? There are two big things they're arguing. The first is they are arguing the president has overstepped his authority, that this is something that, you know, the federal government should not have the ability to do with private businesses or, you know, in general, that OSHA should not have the ability to do, given the scope of the law that set it up. The other argument, though, that you hear a lot is about personal liberty, the idea that any government should not be able to tell

people whether they should get vaccinated or not, even in the midst of a deadly pandemic, because it's personal liberty and the right of Americans to make those choices themselves. And when it comes to the law, is there any credibility to the arguments being made that you just cited that this is an overstepping of the president and OSHA's authority? Well, there's a pretty widespread agreement among many constitutional scholars that this could very well be within the president's authority, that OSHA has wide leeway to declare what constitutes a safety emergency, and this very well could fall in that power. But there's also a real sense, particularly among conservative scholars, that the law is in the eyes of the courts and that there will be very likely a judge somewhere who

would be sympathetic to this legal challenge, possibly up to the United States Supreme Court could be sympathetic to this legal challenge. So it both seems to be that the president is starting from what could be solid legal footing, but also could face some challenge in the courts just because of the way that interpretations of law change over time. I would note that we do have some precedent of the Supreme Court holding up vaccine mandates. It's from 1905. The court basically found that people did not have the freedom at all times to be free from any kind of restraint from the government, including something like a vaccine mandate. So to the extent that that is a binding precedent, that would be on the president's side. But there are already conservative scholars arguing that,

nope, it shouldn't apply here. And I guess that's the battle we are very likely to see in the courts over the following weeks. So that's the legal battle. But it feels quite likely that this will morph into a cultural battle as well, given the language that Republicans are using to talk about these mandates. And it feels like a cultural battle with very big implications for the president and for Democrats in Congress. We are not that far out from midterm elections. And I wonder how the White House is thinking about that. Well, I think the first thing to note is that we're already in a cultural battle with this virus. And a distinct minority of this country has been fighting against almost every government move to impose mandates of any kind, whether it's

masks or school shutdowns or a variety of things that local governments have done to slow the spread of the virus. This is going to really energize and upset that slice of the country even more. But the Biden administration, I think, based on conversations with people around them, is making sort of a double bet here. One is that group is small and was probably not going to vote for Joe Biden anyway. They are hardcore conservative Republicans. That's certainly not everyone who is unvaccinated, by the way, but that is the sort of political activist class that will be activated even more by this mandate. But the second bet they're making is that there is a much larger group of people who are very important to this White House who feel the opposite, who are vaccinated, who want this pandemic to be over, who are sort of college educated people

living in the suburbs, many of them, and who the White House believes will cheer the president coming out and doing more as much as he possibly can, as the White House would put it, to try to end this pandemic as quickly as possible. And his poll numbers were slipping with those people. They could be very important for who controls the House of Representatives next fall. That group is part of this, what the White House might think of as a large majority of Americans who are vaccinated, pro-vaccination, and just tired of this pandemic and want to see more action. It feels worth remembering that Biden's entire campaign message by the end was, I'm going to be the one to end this pandemic. President Trump didn't, I will. And it feels

like if he can't live up to that pledge, a big part of his presidency will have been unrealized. Yeah, and a lot more people will be dead because of it. You know, the administration has fashioned itself from the beginning as different from the previous administration in its response to the pandemic in that they were going to be much more from new variants of the virus, and that ripples through to a bad economy and more voter disenchantment, sort of the entire promise of the presidency will be lost and there will be huge consequences. And then I think that that is much more than just a political problem, obviously, for the president, but it's a deeply human one. that is much more than just a political problem, obviously, for the president, but it's a deeply human one. And Jim, what happens if these mandates don't work and we see all those consequences you just described keep playing out? What tools does Biden really have left after he reaches deep into OSHA regulations

and finds these mandates? Is that really his last big shot? This may be his last really big shot. No matter what he has left in the arsenal, I think there's probably only so much he can ask the American people to do. You know, experts talk about, you know, kind of a finite amount of tolerance

people have for changing their behaviors, even for a global pandemic. So it would be very difficult, I think, for the president to come out in a few months and say, hey, we all need to go back inside for a year to slow the spread. People are just not going to go for that anymore. And so I think that part of the ambition of this announcement is reflective of the fact that the president

doesn't have a lot of other options available to him. And the American people, just like the president, are losing patience. They want this pandemic to be over and they want it to happen now. Well, Jim, thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. The Times reports that based on new data, the United States' vaccination rate of 52.7% will soon be the lowest among the world's largest and wealthiest democracies. The U.S. has already fallen behind Britain, Canada, France, Germany, and Italy, and is expected to slip behind Japan in the coming weeks.

We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. All day can you see By the dawn's early light Over the weekend, the United States commemorated the 20th anniversary of the September 11th terror attacks with ceremonies in Pennsylvania, Washington, and New York, where the names of those killed at the World Trade Center were read aloud by members of their families. Michael Andrew Bain.

Kirk Patwin Bantis. And my uncle, firefighter Christopher Michael M Bain. Kathleen Fantis. And my uncle, firefighter Christopher Michael Mozilla. I know you're with us every day watching over us, and even though I never met you in person, I still miss you a lot. In a speech delivered from Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at the Flight 93 Memorial, former President George W. Bush drew parallels between the foreign extremists who carried out the September 11th attacks

and the domestic extremists who carried out the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. There's little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home. But in their disdain for pluralism, in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols, they are children of the same foul spirit, and it is our continuing duty to confront them. continuing duty to confront them.

Today's episode was produced by Eric Krupke and Rachel Quester. It was edited by Dave Shaw and Lisa Chow. Original music by Brad Fisher, Dan Powell, and Marian Lozano, and engineered by Alishaba Etube. Dan Powell, and Marian Lozano, and engineered by Alishaba Etube. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansford of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.