Democrat Blocks Resolution to End National COVID-19 Emergency

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) speaks to reporters in Washington on Aug. 6, 2022. Anna Rose Layden/Getty Images

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) on Sept. 28 blocked a resolution that would end the national emergency declaration over COVID-19.

Wyden stepped in after Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), a doctor, introduced the resolution.

The one-page measure would terminate the national emergency declaration, which was initially declared by the Trump administration and has been extended through the present day by the Biden administration.

“It is this declaration, coupled with other additional emergency powers currently invoked by the president, which this administration is using to supersize government in order to continue their reckless inflationary spending spree and enact their partisan agenda,” Marshall said on the Senate floor in Washington. “In fact, the White House uses these emergencies to justify their inflationary out-of-control spending, their unconstitutional vaccine and mask mandates, and to forgive student loans.”

The declaration has enabled the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to require data reporting and the Department of Health and Human Services to waive certain requirements for Medicare and Medicaid. It was cited by the Biden administration when officials announced in August that they would cancel thousands of dollars in student debt for millions of Americans.

Marshall, a member of the Senate Health Committee noted that President Joe Biden, a Democrat, recently said that the COVID-19 pandemic is “over,” which he said should mean the end of the emergency.

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) speaks to reporters in Washington on Aug. 5, 2022. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Wyden, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and a member of the Subcommittee on Health Care, said that ending the emergency would exacerbate doctor and nursing shortages.

“Right now, there are requirements in Medicare for a lengthy process that must be completed before it’s possible to hire healthcare providers to serve Medicare patients,” Wyden said. “If the Marshall proposal goes into effect as written, Health and Human Services could not waive this complicated process to take care of patients. So that would leave our country short of health care providers when there’s an acute, even more serious need for them.”

“I have never had a constituent at home, an Oregonian, say, ‘Ron, what we need is more complicated processes and red tape in American health care.’ Usually, they’re talking to us about waiving things. So for those reasons ... I object,” he added later.

Marshall took the floor after the objection, saying he agrees the shortages are a problem.

“But the difference is, I don’t think the government is the solution to the problem. I think the government has created the problem,” he said.

The senator said that the solution is to remove some of the red tape, not to continue letting the administration utilize emergency powers.

“It’s my feeling that this emergency declaration allows the president and the White House to expand those powers, to take our constitutional rights away from us,” Marshall said. “I have encouraged people to take the vaccine and do all the right things. But I still think that it’s time to end the emergency, give us our God-given constitutional rights back.

“I think that we should support ending this declaration of emergency.”