Florida Times-Union: Rep. John Rutherford: Troops discharged for refusing COVID vaccine must be reinstated

July 7, 2024

It has been nearly three years since Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin mandated that all U.S. servicemembers receive the COVID-19 vaccine. In doing so, he and President Joe Biden discharged more than 8,000 members of our military solely because of their vaccination status.

That is thousands of fully trained and combat-ready servicemembers.

It concerned me then - and concerns me now - that the COVID-19 vaccine mandate forced servicemembers to choose between their love of country and their sincerely held religious beliefs. The mandate upended the careers and benefits that our military men and women rightly earned through their dedicated service to our country. To this day, they continue to endure the consequences. 

It took Secretary Austin until Jan. 10, 2023, to finally end the vaccine mandate, only after Congress overturned his policy through passage of the Fiscal Year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, which I supported.

Last year, Congress took further steps to right the wrongs of the vaccine mandate when we passed language in the Fiscal Year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, which I also supported. This bill allows former servicemembers discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine to have their personnel files corrected so they may receive their full retirement benefits.  

It's now 2024 - discharged servicemembers are still waiting for Pentagon bureaucrats to undo the mistakes they made and get their jobs back. Secretary Austin must be held accountable for correcting our troops' personnel files as Congress directed. 

No member of our military discharged over a flawed (and now non-existent) vaccine mandate should be further punished, especially as our military sees an all-time low in the recruitment and retention of its servicemembers.

Just last year, the U.S. Air Force failed to reach its recruitment goals for the first time since 1999. Thanks to being 10% under its active-duty recruiting goal, the Air Force is now cutting planned troop totals by 8,000 for 2025 - the same number of servicemembers told to turn in their uniforms if they refused to take the COVID-19 vaccine.

We're down at least 16,000 servicemembers, thanks to this recruitment failure and the Biden administration's COVID policies alone. That is just the tip of the iceberg.

Our military is clearly struggling to enlist Americans ready to fight for our country. That should be ringing alarm bells for every American, especially my fellow lawmakers. 

Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party is building up its self-reliance in science and technology, bolstering strategic capabilities and making its industrial supply chains more resilient. With its "Made in China 2025" campaign, our greatest adversary is acting to quickly dominate the U.S. in all fields, including nuclear, aerospace and even weapons capabilities like intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Right now, China is the world's largest maritime fighting force with 234 warships to our 219. Chairman Xi Jinping has made it very clear that the People's Republic of China is focused on "more quickly elevating the armed forces to world-class standards" to surpass the U.S. military on all fronts.

That means modernizing equipment and focusing on joint training on land, becoming the world's largest naval power with more than 370 ships and submarines at sea and building up manned and unmanned aircraft in the air. Many argue that China's rapid military buildup has left the People's Liberation Army Navy poised to overtake our Navy quicker than previously believed.

Make no mistake, the Chinese are doing this to gain control over important economic trade routes through the South China Sea and around the world. Chairman Xi has also called on the People's Liberation Army to be ready to take Taiwan by force by 2027 and reunite its former empire.

This would be the first of many forceful acquisitions of democratic and free states and territories. It will not stop there.

The Chinese Communist Party poses a real and dangerous threat to the U.S. As China races to global military and economic dominance, the U.S. must not fall behind. We must maintain a ready, trained force to address the many foreign threats we face.

That is why I introduced the Reinstate Our Troops Act. This bill requires that all servicemembers discharged for refusing the COVID vaccine be promptly reinstated to their previously held rank and job.

With the passage of the Fiscal Year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress took further steps to course correct. This year's defense bill requires the Department of Defense to implement a strategy to recruit these discharged servicemembers back into the military. 

At a time like this, we need a mission-focused, combat-ready force more than ever. I implore the Department of Defense to do everything possible to swiftly reinstate every man and woman discharged from our armed forces over a vaccine. 

If we want to be No. 1 in the world, we must help our military rise to the occasion. That includes reversing the Biden Administration's COVID-19 policies that left so many servicemembers without jobs and weakened our force capabilities. It also means recruiting those same servicemembers back into our military.

It is past time to right the wrong that has harmed military readiness and deeply affected the lives of so many military families.

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