Penna Dexter

It was a shocking overreach when the president instructed the Labor Department to mandate that businesses with over 100 employees require that those employees receive Covid-19 vaccines or be subject to regular Covid testing. Penalties could hit $14,000 per violation. Medical providers that accept Medicare or Medicaid, and federal workers are also required to be vaccinated with no testing alternative.

A vaccine mandate ignores the fact that millions of Americans have recovered from Covid and carry immunity — more robust immunity, recent studies show, than that conferred by vaccines. This decree also burdens businesses trying to recover from the economic effects of government-imposed lockdowns followed by overly-generous unemployment checks that have disincentivized many recipients from returning to work.

New research reveals another reason for our enduring labor shortage: Moms are slow to return to the workplace and many are deciding not to return at all.

Meanwhile, Congress is considering another overreach, a massive spending package on the premise that many of its proposals will get parents back to the office. Yet, as radio host Erick Erickson points out, the programs provided for in the House’s budgeted $3.5 trillion are “based on the way the world worked before the virus affected everyone’s life.”

In insisting we need this spending, he said in a radio commentary, the Left is “skating to where the puck was…not where it’s going to be.” To take advantage of many of these proposed federal programs, he says, “you must reembrace a lifestyle that you rejected during the pandemic and don’t want to go back to.”

Forced to supervise their kids’ online learning, some parents didn’t like what they saw in their kids’ curriculum and are pulling their kids out of public schools. Some saw the benefit of being more involved in day-to-day teaching. Many are homeschooling now. Lots of moms have simply realized they’re ok living on one income and won’t be going back to work.

And that’s just great for their kids.