Findings; sense of Congress

(a) Findings Congress finds the following: (1) On August 24, 2021, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin issued a memorandum titled, Mandatory Coronavirus Disease 2019 Vaccination of Department of Defense Service Members. (2) This memorandum stated, I therefore direct the Secretaries of the Military Departments to immediately begin full vaccination of all members of the Armed Forces under DoD authority on active duty or in the Ready Reserve, including the National Guard, who are not fully vaccinated against COVID–19. (3) In December 2022, the Department of Defense reported that 98 percent of active duty service members and 96 percent of the total force have been vaccinated from COVID–19. (4) As a result of this memorandum, more than 8,400 members of the Armed Forces were forced out of the military for refusing to get the COVID–19 vaccine. (5) On January 10, 2023, Secretary Austin was forced to rescind this memorandum as a requirement of section 525 of the James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 (Public Law 117–263). (b) Sense of Congress It is the sense of Congress that the actions referred to in subsection (a) that were taken by the Department of Defense under the Biden administration caused irreparable harm to the health and readiness of the United States Armed Forces.