Senate expected to vote to overturn Biden vaccine mandate for businesses as soon as Wednesday

Two Democrats – Sens. Jon Tester from Montana and Joe Manchin from West Virginia – have stated that they support the GOP efforts led by Indiana Sen. Mike Braun and it only takes a simple majority of 51 votes to get approved to be through the chamber.

While it is unlikely to become law as his chances of passing the House of Representatives are uncertain and Biden is sure to veto it, the efforts demonstrate bipartisan opposition in Congress to the federal government’s vaccine mandate to large employers.

Back in September, Biden announced that he would instruct the Department of Labor to require all companies with 100 or more employees to either have their employees fully vaccinated or to undergo weekly tests for Covid-19 and the wearing of masks. The emergency rule was enacted in November, which led to lawsuits from republican-led states and private employers, but also from liberal-minded unions. A federal appeals court temporarily blocked the Biden government’s vaccine rules last month, due to go into effect Jan. 4. The multiple lawsuits against the mandate have since been consolidated and assigned to a federal appeals court in Ohio, with many believing the case going to the US Supreme Court. Senate Republicans last month filed their challenge to Biden’s mandate under the Congressional Review Act, a legal instrument that allows Congress to reverse a rule of the executive branch.

Braun and other Senate Republicans have argued that the vaccine mandate is an excess of the federal government’s powers and weighs on businesses already ailing, while insisting that vaccines are a personal choice.

Last week, as Congress faced a deadline to fund the government, some Senate Republicans threatened to force a government shutdown unless they get a vote on an amendment that would restrict the use of federal funds for Bidens Covid-19 – Bans vaccine mandates. However, the amendment ultimately failed with 50 to 48 votes.

While voting to extend government funding into February to avoid a shutdown, Manchin announced that as a co-sponsor, he has signed and will “strongly support” the GOP resolution to lift the corporate vaccine mandate.

“I’ve long said that we should incentivize, not punish, private employers whose responsibility it is to protect their employees from Covid-19,” the West Virginia Democrat said in a statement last week.

Tester came to Manchin on Tuesday and gave Republicans enough votes to be approved by the chamber.

Tester stated his opposition to the vaccine mandate, saying he had “heard repeated concerns from Montana’s small business and community leaders about the negative impact the vaccine mandate had on private companies on their bottom line and the economy of our state.”

“So I intend to join a bipartisan majority of my colleagues in defending workplaces in Montana and small businesses against these pesky regulations,” he said in a statement on Tuesday.

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell told Fox News that the Senate will vote on the resolution this week, adding that he has a “decent chance of passing the Senate.”

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer criticized the Republican-led challenge to the Covid-19 vaccine mandate as an “anti-science, anti-vaccine voice.”

“If their plans go into effect, Covid will last longer and the likelihood increases that new variants and new more dangerous variants will appear,” said Schumer on Capitol Hill. “It’s against science, against common sense, it doesn’t make any sense.”

However, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, many companies voluntarily put in place security measures to protect their employees and customers, and are moving forward with the Covid vaccine mandates, regardless of whether the courts are putting down or upholding Biden government regulations.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misidentified Sen. Mitch McConnell’s leadership position. He is the minority leader in the Senate.

CNN’s Manu Raju contributed to this report.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/08/politics/senate-resolution-opposing-biden-vaccine-mandate/index.html