Senator Charles Grassley recently voted in favor of a resolution that passed in the Senate calling for congressional disapproval of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ COVID vaccine mandate that takes effect Tuesday.

While the U.S. Supreme Court voted in January to block vaccine requirements from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration they ruled 5-4 to allow the CMS mandate to go into effect that requires workers in most health care settings that participate in Medicare and Medicaid programs to be fully vaccinated. The Senate resolution passed on a vote of 49-44 to nullify the mandate, but Senator Grassley tells KCII it won’t be brought up in the House of Representatives which he says is a bad situation, “It’s a mistake to have those requirements because already you’re having hospitals being very short of workers even in Iowa where we haven’t had the virus situation quite as bad as other parts of the country. Even in New York where they have much tighter requirements on vaccination and masks and schools being closed and all that sort of stuff they’ve kind of reached a point where they’re going to as long you’re asymptomatic they want you to come to work.”

The Washington County Board of Health recently adopted a mandate policy for their staff that stipulates documentation of COVID mitigation measures must be kept for those who aren’t fully vaccinated, rather than requiring weekly tests as CMS has proposed.