Republican Rep. Martin Graber joined Rep. Steven Holt’s Zoom conference call earlier this week. Graber shared his thoughts regarding the looming vaccine mandate.
“There’s a lot of people engaged in this fight, and it’s basically one that we want to make sure we understand is the federal government has overreached their authority,” Graber said. “There’s no question about that. But what we don’t want to do is put our businesses into a bind while trying to help our individual citizens. So it’s kind of a balancing act that we have to make sure that we’re taken care of.”
He said there is also danger in crafting a solution to a problem when the ramifications are not understood.
“We need to make sure that we get to the point where we know what the Biden Administration is going to be doing as far as what their goals are, what their objectives are,” he said.
Graber said businesses implementing a vaccine mandate is a mistake on their part and he believes it will “come back to bite them.”
“As has been mentioned, it is a civil rights issue,” he said. “Again, as an employer, I have no right to know what your HIPAA information is. I have to have a release from you to be able to get that and so for me to mandate that, you have to have this or I know your status is basically an overreach.”
Graber said he is confident the Biden mandate will be challenged and is hopeful there will be a “positive solution” to address the situation.
