A Senate vote is planned to end the COVID-19 emergency but the White House has said it would veto the bill is passed.
The emergency was declared by former President Donald Trump on March 13, 2020 and it was extended many times by President Biden, but Senate Joint Resolution 3 is an effort to end it, The Epoch Times reported.
The White House said that ending the declaration would “unnecessarily and abruptly curtail the ability of the Administration to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“COVID-19 has posed an unprecedented public health challenge for the United States. Although we have made tremendous progress in combating the virus and are moving forward safely, the virus continues to pose a risk to the American people and our health care system. We must also be prepared for possible future variants,” it said.
It also said that if the Senate passes the bill it “would be a reckless and costly mistake,” and if it did pass, the president would veto it.
Trump invoked the emergency in 2020 and Biden extended it once in February 2021 and again before it was set to expire on March 1. Declaring an emergency enables presidents to take certain actions, including closing crossings along the southern and northern borders.
Biden said in a recent statement that the COVID-19 pandemic “continues to cause significant risk to the public health and safety of the nation.”
Under the National Emergencies Act, Congress is able to determine whether such an emergency should continue.
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) introduced the resolution in February.
When he appeared on Fox News he argued that it was time to cancel the emergency declaration.
“With COVID cases and hospitalizations on the decline, 94 percent of Americans having immunity to COVID, mask mandates falling by the wayside, and 70 percent of Americans agreeing ‘it’s time we accept that COVID is here to stay’ and that ‘we just need to get on with our lives,’ it’s clear we need new approach to COVID as we learn to live with it. That new approach starts with putting an end to the COVID national state of emergency,” the senator, who is also a doctor, said.
This week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was seen before a press conference telling students that were standing behind him to take off their masks if they so choose, calling mask-wearing “Covid theater” that “does nothing.”
“You do not have to wear those masks. Please take them off. Honestly, it’s not doing anything. We’ve gotta stop with this Covid theater. So if you wanna wear it, fine, but this is ridiculous,” he could be heard saying before starting the press conference at the University of South Florida.
The governor has recently cranked up his criticism of mandatory masking, having recently released a statement, and releasing a video on Twitter condemning mask mandates.
“People want to live freely in Florida, without corporate masking creating a two-tier society and without overbearing isolation for children,” said Governor Ron DeSantis in a statement co-released with Florida’s Surgeon General, Dr. Joe Lapado. “We are empowering health care practitioners to follow science, not Fauci’s status quo.”
