President Biden’s “Path out of the Pandemic” mandated that four groups of people be vaccinated against COVID-19: all federal executive branch workers, contractors that do business with the federal government, health care workers at Medicaid- and Medicare-participating hospitals, and employees of private-sector businesses with 100 or more employees.
Federal courts have struck down three of these mandates. The Supreme Court allowed to stand the requirement that facilities participating in Medicare and Medicaid must mandate that their employees have at least one dose of the vaccine by February 14 and be fully vaccinated by March 15.
After the “Path out of the Pandemic” was promulgated, “the Office of Head Start (OHS) published an Interim Final Rule with Comment Period (IFC) on Nov. 30, 2021, requiring all staff, certain contractors, and volunteers to be vaccinated for COVID-19 by Jan. 31, 2022.”
The official summary of the rule states:
This interim final rule with comment (IFC) adds new provisions to the Head Start Program Performance Standards to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Head Start programs. This IFC requires effective upon publication, universal masking for all individuals two years of age and older, with some noted exceptions, and all Head Start staff, contractors whose activities involve contact with or providing direct services to children and families, and volunteers working in classrooms or directly with children to be vaccinated for COVID-19 by January 31, 2022.
The purpose of the rule “is to protect the health and safety of Head Start staff, children, and families and to mitigate the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Head Start programs.”
The federal government has over 80 means-tested welfare programs that provide Americans benefits, services, or payments on the basis of the recipient’s income and/or assets and family size. The largest of these programs are Medicaid; the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP); the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP [food stamps]); Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); Section 8 housing vouchers; Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF); Supplemental Security Income (SSI); school breakfast and lunch programs; and Head Start.
Head Start is “administered by the Office of Head Start, within the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.” The OHS “administers grant funding and oversight to 1,600 public and private nonprofit and for-profit agencies that provide Head Start services.”
Head Start programs “promote the school readiness of infants, toddlers, and preschool-aged children from low-income families.” The programs “support children’s growth in a positive learning environment through a variety of services, which include: early learning and development, health, and family well-being.”
Head Start, which began as an eight-week program in 1965, was part of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. About a million children are now enrolled in Head Start at a cost of about $10 billion a year.
After the OHS published its rule requiring vaccination and masking, Republican attorneys general from 24 states sued the Biden administration. They argued in their lawsuit:
The Head Start Mandate is unlawful. It exceeds the executive’s statutory authority; is contrary to law; illegally bypassed notice and comment; is arbitrary and capricious; constitutes an exercise of legislative power in violation of the Nondelegation Doctrine; and violates the Congressional Review Act, the Tenth Amendment, the Anti-Commandeering doctrine, the Spending Clause, and the Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act of 1999.
The legal challenge was led by Louisiana attorney general Jeff Landry, who stated:
Like all of his other unlawful attempts to impose medical decisions on Americans, Biden’s overreaching orders to mask two-year-olds and force vaccinate teachers in our underserved communities will cost jobs and impede child development. If enacted, Biden’s authoritarianism will cut funding, programs, and childcare that working families, single mothers, and elderly raising grandchildren rely on desperately.
At the beginning of the year, U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty — a Trump appointee based in Louisiana — blocked the Head Start vaccination and masking mandates. He stated:
In this court’s opinion, the executive branch has declared it has the authority to make laws through federal agencies. A crossroad has clearly been reached in this country. If the executive branch is allowed to usurp the power of the legislative branch to make laws, then this country is no longer a democracy — it is a monarchy.
Naturally, Republican attorneys general praised the court’s decision, like Alabama attorney general Steve Marshall:
Once again the federal executive branch has overstepped its legal authority to make laws and once again a federal court has agreed with the State of Alabama that such overreach is unconstitutional and should be stopped.
This victory will help ensure that numerous Head Start programs will continue to operate rather than have to fire teachers and cut back services to children. And this win will forestall the nonsensical and damaging practice of forcing masks on two-year-olds.
But Republicans fail to see the real issue with Head Start.
Attorney General Marshall believes that the Head Start vaccination and masking mandate is unconstitutional. But then he talks about Head Start continuing to operate as if it were constitutional to do so.
This same faulty thinking was exhibited by Judge Doughty, who wrote in his decision: “Although this case is about the Head Start Mandate, the real issue is separation of powers under the United States Constitution. Specifically, whether the Agency Defendants, government agencies under the Executive branch, have the authority to impose the Head Start Mandate.”
Notice that he didn’t mention whether the Agency Defendants have the authority under the Constitution to exist. There is no provision in the Constitution for Congress to create a Head Start program or any other welfare program. Yet, Republicans — who claim to be the party of the Constitution — have regularly funded the continuance and expansion of Head Start.
The Republican majority in the Senate during Ronald Reagan’s first six years in office never made any attempt to repeal even one Great Society program.
Although the Republican majority in both Houses of Congress during the last six years of Bill Clinton’s presidency enacted welfare reform, no real attempt was ever made to eliminate any welfare program.
The Congress that met during Barack Obama’s last two years in office had huge Republican majorities, but they made no attempt to even reform welfare.
And even when Republicans had a president in the White House and controlled both houses of Congress — for more than four years under George W. Bush and during the first two years of Donald Trump’s presidency — and could have eliminated any government agency or program, they not only failed to do so but actually increased government spending overall.
Republicans were right in fighting against the Head Start vaccination and masking mandates. But as usual, they fail to see the real issue.