Remarks by President Biden on the Importance of COVID-⁠19 Vaccine Requirements
OCTOBER 07, 2021
Location: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

2:56 P.M. CDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Jerry, thank you.  (Applause.)  Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Mr. Mayor, thanks for the passport into town.  I tell you, every time I come to the Greater Chicago Area, there’s somebody I want to steal and bring back to Washington, Gov.  I’ve done it a couple times, you know.  (Laughs.)  At any rate —

Look, Jerry, every company needs people like you — every single one — someone who knows what my dad taught me.  And a lot of people who know me well, including the Governor’s sister, who I worked closely with for eight years — my Dad used to have an expression.  He used to say, “Everyone is entitled to be treated with dignity.  And, Joey, a job is a hell of a lot more than about a paycheck.  It’s about your dignity.  It’s about your place in the community.  It about being able to look your kid in the eye and say, ‘Honey, everything is going to be okay.'” 

That’s the God’s truth.  He’d say that every — ever since he lost — things went south in Scranton, Pennsylvania, when I was a kid and coal was shut down.  My dad was not a coalminer.  I had a great-grandfather who was a coal miner engineer.  But, you know, he was a salesperson.  Everything — we moved down to Wilmington, Delaware — a little town called Claymont, Delaware.  A little steel town where there’s no steel anymore, but right on the border of Pennsylvania.  And it was always about the dignity of work.

And what you’ve been doing here about this pandemic is about protecting the dignity — the dignity of your fellow Americans.  You know, you stayed in an operations mode of lining up protective equipment for the rest of the country, all around the country.  And when the vaccine came out, you all stepped up and got the shots.  And as a company, you’re getting more shots in arms. 

And I want to thank Otto for hosting us here at Clayco — one of the Midwest’s biggest construction companies, $3 billion a year in revenue.  Thousands of employees nationwide and here in Elk Grove — 100 percent union.  Not labor.  Union.  Union.  (Applause.) 

One of the reasons I said I ran was to rebuild this country and rebuild the backbone of the country, and I meant it sincerely.  And the backbone is to build from the bottom up and the middle out.

I’m a capitalist.  I think people should be able to go out and make a lot of money.  That’s not — that’s not the problem.  But everybody should have an even shot.

And who built the middle class?  Unions built the middle class.  Without the — not a joke — without the unions, we would not have a middle class in America.  So, everybody owes you all.

You know, you’re constructing buildings for some of America’s biggest companies, but you’re also doing something bigger than that: You’re helping us beat back COVID-19.  So are the great leaders who are here today. 

JB, you — Governor, you’ve done more than about anybody I can think of in any state.  I mean that sincerely.  You’ve stepped up.  You’ve always done what you said you were going to do.  And you’ve been relentless in getting people vaccinated.  In the Midwest, you’re leading.  You’re leading.  And it’s real; it’s not — it’s not hyperbole.

And Mayor Lightfoot — who I said, “Please go back to work.  I’m going to get in trouble.”  She had to leave.  But Mayor Lightfoot, the same thing.

And, Elk Grove Mayor Johnson, you’ve — you’ve done a hell of a job as well. 

You know, we have 11 members of Congress here.  Raja, thank you for hosting this in your district, for permission to come into the district.  And I also want to thank colleagues in the House of Representatives: Mike Quigley; Robin Kelly; Bobby Rush; Danny Davis; Jan Schakowsky, an old friend; Bill Foster; Brad Schneider; Sean Casten; Lauren Underwood; and Marie Newman.

And I know — look, for them, you don’t quite under- — you all understand it in a different context, but this a busman’s holiday for them, to have to come hear another politician speak.  (Laughter.)  You know what I mean?  (Laughs.)  Not a joke, folks.  I appreciate it.  I genuinely appreciate it.  I appreciate it.

And I know they wanted to be here, but there’s others who are in Washington and can’t be here.  Dick Durbin and Tammy, who I’ve both spoken to, they’re in Washington and hopefully — hopefully will be voting soon.

And also, we’ve got state leadership here.  Lieutenant Governor Juliana is here — Stratton.  And the Ohio-Pennsyl- –the Ohio-Pennsylvania — I’m from Pennsylvania.  The Illinois President, Don Harmon; State Senator Laura Murphy; State Rep. Martin Moylan.

And we’ve got great labor leaders here, too.  Tim — where’s Tim?  There you go, Tim.  Thank you.  Thank you, pal.  AFL-CIO State President.  And Jeff Isaacson, United Brotherhood of Carpenters.  And Don Finn, IBEW.  And Robert Riter — Reiter — R-E-I-T-E-R — Reiter — of the Chicago Federation of Labor.

And, folks, that’s how we beat COVID-19: by working together.

We have an expression in that little town of Claymont I was from: “You all brung me to the dance.”  Labor, you’re the — you’re the reason I’m standing here.  Not a joke.  Not a joke.  I got elected when I was 29 years old to the United States Senate, 17 days before I was eligible to be sworn in.  I had to wait around to be sworn in — not a joke as well.  And I won by 3,300 votes.  And labor — labor, including the police unions as well as the firefighters, stood up and endorsed me. 

And because — I kid with the governor.  I said, “I grew up in a town called Claymont, Delaware.  From third grade on, I went to a little Catholic school called Holy Rosary.  And across the street from Holy Rosary was a — was the fire station.  And the guys I grew up with, you became either a firefighter, a cop, or a priest.  I wasn’t qualified for any of them, so I had to be President.”  (Laughter.)

But, look, it’s been a month since I laid out a six-part plan to accelerate the path out of this pandemic: One, vaccinate the unvaccinated.  Two, continue to keep the vaccinated protected.  Keep children safe and schools open, which the Gov is doing.  Increase testing and masking.  Protect the economic recovery.  And improve the care of the people with COVID-19. 

We’ve made real progress across the board.  More than 185 million Americans are now fully vaccinated.  More than 75 percent of eligible Americans have gotten at least one shot.

We’ve made great progress on equity as well, and closing gaps in racial — the gaps in race, as well as ethnic vaccination rates.  Recent data shows that Latino Americans, Black Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans have now gotten vaccinated about the comparable rate as white Americans.  That’s not happened before.  And our work on equity isn’t done, but it’s an important piece of progress. 

We’re also starting to see less than 19 — less COVID-19 cases in a vast majority of communities around the country.  Cases are down, this past month, by 40 percent.  Hospitalizations are down by 25 percent.  We’re headed in the right direction if we don’t — if we keep our eye on the ball here.  We still have a long way to go.

The fact is, this has been a pandemic of the unvaccinated.  Unvaccinated.  The unvaccinated overcrowd our hospitals, overrunning emergency rooms and intensive care units.  The unvaccinated patients are — are leaving no room for someone with a heart attack or in need of a cancer operation and so much more because they can’t into the ICU.  They can’t get into the operating rooms. 

The unvaccinated also put our economy at risk because people are reluctant to go out.  And think about this: Even in places where there is no restriction on going to restaurants and gyms and movie theaters, people are not going in anywhere near the numbers because they’re worried they’re going to get sick.

I’ve tried everything in my power to get people vaccinated.  First thing I did when I was sworn into office back on January 20th is I bought enough vaccine — right off the bat — to vaccinate every single American.  There were only 4 million Americans who had been vaccinated up to that point, even though the virus had been around.  

Second, we made everyone eligible to get a vaccination and made it easy and convenient for them to find a place to get vaccinated — over 80,000 places around the country. 

Third, we gave everyone ample time and information to deal with their concerns.  We developed hundreds of million — we’d — millions of dollars in incentives — you did here in the city and the state of — of Illinois — and cities and community organizations to encourage vaccinations.  Governor Pritzer — Pritzker, you’ve done one hell of a job, in terms of encouraging people before we even get to the mandate.

But even after all those efforts, we still had more than a quarter of people in the United States who were eligible for vaccinations but didn’t get the shot.

And we know there is no other way to beat the pandemic than to get the vast majority of Americans vaccinated.  It’s as simple as that. 

And to — to spread to our children, to spread throughout society and at our hospitals the risk of other variants — it’s all dangerous and obvious, but we’re still not there. 

We have to beat this thing.  So, while I didn’t race to do it right away, that’s why I’ve had to move toward requirements that everyone get vaccinated or I had the authority to do that.  That wasn’t my first instinct. 

My administration is now requiring federal workers to be vaccinated.  We’ve also required federal contractors to be vaccinated.  If you have a contract with the federal government, working for the federal government, you have to be vaccinated. 

We’re requiring active duty military to be vaccinated.  We’re making sure healthcare workers are vaccinated, because if you seek care at a healthcare facility, you should have the certainty that the pro- — the people providing that care are protected from COVID and cannot spread it to you. 

The Labor Department is going to shortly issue an emergency rule — which I asked for several weeks ago, and they’re going through the process — to require all employees [employers] with more than 100 people, whether they work for the federal government or not — this is within a — in the purview of the Labor Department — to ensure their workers are fully vaccinated or face testing at least once a week.

In total, this Labor Department vaccination requirement will cover 100 million Americans, about two thirds of all the people who work in America.

And here’s the deal: These requirements are already proving that they work.

Starting in July, when I announced the first vaccination requirement for the federal government, about 95 million eligible Americans were unvaccinated.  This was mentioned a little bit earlier.  Today, we’ve reduced that number to 67 [million] eligible Americans who aren’t vaccinated.  And today we released a new report outlining effective vaccination requirements that are already proving their worth.

This report shows three key things:

First, vaccination requirements result in more people getting vaccinated.  In the past few weeks, as more and more organizations have implemented their own requirements, they have seen their vaccination rates rise dramatically.