Hoyer Statement on President Biden's National Strategy and Executive Actions on COVID-19

“I commend President Biden for the national strategy he put forward today, as well as the executive actions he signed this afternoon. These actions - which include immediately invoking the Defense Production Act to harness the full power of the government to deploy more vaccination doses, requiring that masks be worn in airports and other busy transit spaces, providing clear guidance to schools as they make plans to reopen safely, and expanding the number of people eligible to receive the vaccine - build on the first steps he took yesterday to require masks in federal buildings and public lands and to rejoin the World Health Organization, where Dr. Fauci today began to restore American leadership in fighting this pandemic.  I am encouraged that today's executive actions also include measures to protect essential workers’ health and safety as well as a directive to create a racial equity task force that will look closely at how to mitigate the serious disparities in infection, hospitalization, and fatality rates. The House will work closely with the Senate and the White House to build on today’s efforts with COVID-19 relief legislation that meets the measure of this challenge.

“It was disheartening to learn in the past twenty-four hours that the Biden-Harris Administration inherited a national vaccine deployment plan from former President Trump that was deeply flawed and will need to be rewritten from scratch.  Americans will soon see, though, what responsible crisis management leadership looks like after a year of being told that the virus was either a hoax or that it would magically disappear. No longer will there be ambiguity from government officials about the efficacy and importance of wearing masks to stop the spread of this disease. No longer will science be sidelined in a public health crisis, to the detriment of the American people’s health and safety. Over the next hundred days and beyond, under the leadership of President Biden and the Democratic Congress, our country will confront this pandemic head-on, taking swift and bold measures to keep Americans safe by speeding up the deployment of vaccines and reopening our economy. This will still take time, and we each must do our part to protect against the spread of COVID-19 as we work together to defeat it.”