VIDEO: Senate Republicans Block Rosen Effort Supporting Children’s Access to Vaccines, Denouncing RFK’s Anti-Vax Conspiracy Theories

Watch Senator Rosen's Full Remarks HERE.

WASHINGTON, DC - Today, U.S. Senator Jacky Rosen (D-NV) took to the Senate floor to try to pass her resolution condemning Florida's action against required vaccines for schoolchildren and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, but Senate Republicans blocked it. Recent polling has shown overwhelming support for this issue. In her remarks, Senator Rosen condemned Senate Republicans for blocking the passage of her resolution to protect children's access to life-saving vaccines and preserve long-standing school vaccination requirements.

Below are excerpts of Senator Rosen's floor remarks:

When parents send their kids to school, they rightfully expect that they will be safe and protected.

Parents expect their kids to bring home knowledge, not polio.

They expect them to share stories, not measles.

They expect them to get smart, not get smallpox.

And the reality is that this has been the case for decades because we have had vaccines to safely and efficiently keep students protected against these terrible diseases.

Unfortunately, there's an extreme movement that relies on conspiracy theories and that's trying to overturn commonsense science vaccination guidelines and make children vulnerable to life-threatening illnesses.

Earlier this month, Florida announced it was rolling back long-standing vaccine requirements for schools…requirements that have prevented the death of more than one million children in the last thirty years alone. Think about that number - from devastating diseases like measles, polio, and whooping cough.

Removing these safeguards will cost kids' lives - there's no other way of putting it. Parents will bury their children.

It'll bring us back to a time before vaccines, when parents prayed their child would be spared from polio so they wouldn't have to spend the rest of their life inside of an iron lung.

That's not freedom. Living inside of an iron lung because someone refused to get a vaccine is anything but being free.

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Let's also be clear: this is not what parents want.

In fact, more than eighty percent of parents support vaccine requirements for schools to prevent diseases like polio, measles, mumps, rubella, smallpox, hepatitis, and a number of other diseases that we don't even think about on a daily basis.

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Washington Republicans cannot stay silent while extremists in Washington and in Florida try to make it more likely that children don't receive critical vaccines.

That is why I introduced a resolution opposing these extreme policies and reaffirming something the overwhelming majority of Americans already know: vaccines save lives, vaccines protect kids, vaccines protect every American and every American deserves the freedom to access them.

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By blocking this resolution, Washington Republicans are saying they're okay with extreme policies that make vaccines inaccessible, unaffordable, roll back vaccine requirements for schoolchildren, and risk bringing back diseases like measles, polio, and smallpox to families and communities, to those most vulnerable.

I don't believe this is a partisan issue. Disease is an equal opportunity predator. Diagnosis can change your life this fast. So it isn't partisan. The overwhelming majority of parents, including three-quarters of Republicans, support school vaccine requirements. Blocking my resolution ignores parents, ignores science, and puts kids at risk.

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