Utah GOP Sen. Mitt Romney voted against repealing mask mandates on public transportation. Why? Because he apparently forgot that his job is to legislate.
Romney was the only Republican to oppose repealing the mandates. Eight Democrats broke ranks and supported the measure, which makes sense, given that the mask requirement on airplanes is inexplicable at this point. According to CNN’s Ali Zaslav, citing a Romney aide, Romney voted to keep the mandates because “he believes it’s important for public health officials to make these types of decisions, not politicians.”
A GOP aide in Romney’s office says he voted against Sen. Rand Paul’s measure to repeal travel mask mandates because, as he has been vocal about in the past, he believes it’s important for public health officials to make these types of decisions, not politicians
— Ali Zaslav (@alizaslav) March 16, 2022
Romney has apparently forgotten what Utahns elected him to do in the U.S. Senate. He has this whole thing exactly backward. Public health officials are appointed to offer guidance to politicians, not to make decisions for them. Decisions are supposed to be made by elected officials, such as senators and presidents. This is, in fact, the only responsibility Romney and other legislators have. His job is to make these types of decisions, not to hand them off to unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats.
Romney and other legislators are supposed to weigh the guidance given by “experts” along with other factors in their decision-making, such as non-disease-related externalities of COVID restrictions. The same public health officials to whom Romney is deferring here have said that women should never drink alcohol if they aren’t on birth control and that no one should ever eat cookie dough. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would still have children masked in schools, regardless of vaccination status — a recommendation that most school districts fortunately ignore at this point.
Public health guidance is not gospel. Often, it isn’t even science, as we’ve seen with destructive and ridiculous restrictions that have been handed down over the past two years. The Senate’s vote on public transportation mask mandates was the chance for senators to weigh the claimed benefits of mask mandates against the reality that nearly everyone worried about COVID has already been vaccinated. If Romney wants the mandates to stay in place, he should say so, without claiming that public health bureaucrats get the final say.
Romney gets a lot of undue criticism thanks to his opposition to former President Donald Trump. That should not distract from his real mistakes, such as this one. Romney can be as anti-Trump as he wishes to be, but at the very least, he should be expected to do his job and not outsource it to CDC bureaucrats.
