Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall: Only obstacle to vaccine is government interference. Huh?
Have you noticed that Republican Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall tends to worry about all the wrong things?
In the first piece of legislation he’s introduced in the U.S. Senate, Marshall is sponsoring a law that would keep COVID-19 relief dollars from funding abortions.
What, you didn’t know that any such dollars were funding abortions? They aren’t. And can’t, because the Hyde Amendment, first passed in 1976 and reenacted every year since, has kept federal funds from paying for abortions since 1980, when the amendment first went into effect after the Supreme Court ruled that such a ban was constitutional. Kansas also has multiple laws that prevent state funds from paying for abortions.
In other words, this is pure legislative theater from the OB-GYN from Great Bend.
Yet when it comes to the all-too-real problem of the fatally slow vaccine rollout — and with no federal plan until recently, no wonder — Marshall isn’t too concerned.
In fact, in a radio interview Thursday with Greg Agaki on WIBW in Topeka, he said that while he’s “optimistic” that everyone who wants to be vaccinated soon can be, the main obstacle is this: “I think it’s getting government out of the way. … If we quit trying to micromanage those community pharmacists and the health departments and the doctor’s offices, they’ll make the right choices.”
Government has been so “out of the way,” it’s almost like it only recently noticed that the pandemic is out of control. And of course pharmacists and health departments and doctors would choose to get vaccines in arms, if technical challenges weren’t so daunting and the vaccine weren’t in such short supply.
Marshall also hopes that President Joe Biden doesn’t mess up a process that had been going so well: “I pray that President Biden doesn’t stop everything and try to start over here.”
Maybe the senator has already forgotten, but states across the land had been begging Congress for months to support the vaccination efforts of underfunded, overwhelmed state agencies. Lawmakers didn’t approve that funding until late December. “Over to you and good luck” was the response of the last White House until the final weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency.
Asked whether it’s really going to take months to get young people vaccinated, Marshall said that such a delay would be unacceptable. But then he also said this: “If you’re young and healthy, you should talk to your doctor about the pros and cons of taking the vaccine.”
Especially coming from a doctor, that’s just shocking nonsense, since the available vaccines are perfectly safe.
Pat Roberts’ replacement a culture warrior
In response to Marshall’s proposed legislation on keeping coronavirus relief funds from paying for abortions, Democratic Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly said in a statement to The Star Editorial Board that the state’s new junior senator should instead focus on reality: “The elections are over. It’s time for public officials to put politics aside and do what’s best for the people we represent — and right now, that means getting more vaccines and federal stimulus funds right away.”
You’d think that Dr. Marshall would feel that way, too, but this is a doctor who put his whole family on hydroxychloroquine after Trump said he’d started taking it to ward off COVID-19.
This is a doctor who often did not wear a mask while campaigning during a pandemic.
Though the real-world effect of his proposed law would be nil, it does serve one purpose. It confirms that Marshall intends to be a far-right culture warrior, and far to the right of a more traditional heartland Republican like his predecessor, Pat Roberts.
“Being pro-life is just part of who I am and there is no other alternative,” he said in a statement Thursday. “As an obstetrician, it’s been a thrill of my life to get to bring thousands of babies into the world and now it’s a thrill of my life to be in the U.S. Senate and continue the fight for pro-life policies.”
Many of his constituents might be more thrilled by legislation that helped them and their children in some concrete way.
But those conservatives who feared that Roger Marshall was any more moderate than his 2020 GOP primary rival Kris Kobach, the former Kansas secretary of state, ought to be relieved.