Becerra's remarks earlier Thursday came in reaction to Republican criticism President Joe Biden has received this week for his administration’s latest push to persuade vaccine-hesitant Americans to get their shots.
In a speech at the White House on Tuesday, Biden gave an update on the state of the U.S. vaccination program and ongoing efforts to reach parts of the country where skepticism of the vaccine still runs high.
“Now, we need to go to community-by-community, neighborhood-by-neighborhood, and oftentimes, door-to-door — literally knocking on doors — to get help to the remaining people protected from the virus,” Biden said.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki also detailed the components of the administration’s vaccine campaign at her briefing on Tuesday, including “targeted, community-by-community, door-to-door outreach to get remaining Americans vaccinated.”
Those references to door-knocking drew swift rebukes from congressional Republicans, who cast the comments as potential infringements on Americans’ civil liberties.
“How about don’t knock on my door,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) tweeted on Tuesday. “You’re not my parents. You’re the government. Make the vaccine available, and let people be free to choose. Why is that concept so hard for the left?”
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) also tweeted : “It’s NONE of the [government’s] business knowing who has or hasn’t been vaccinated.”
But Becerra dismissed those complaints earlier on Thursday. “Perhaps we should point out that the federal government has spent trillions of dollars to try to keep Americans alive during this pandemic,” he told CNN in an interview .
“So it's absolutely the government’s business,” Becerra said. “It's taxpayers’ business, if we've to continue to spend money to try to keep people from contracting Covid and helping reopen the economy.”
The secretary also noted that “knocking on a door has never been against the law” and that Americans “don't have to answer. But we hope you do.”
The back-and-forth over the administration’s new strategy comes as 160 million Americans are poised to be fully vaccinated by the end of this week, according to the latest figures from the president.
But the Delta variant of the coronavirus, which is more easily transmissible, accounted for more than half of Covid-19 cases in the U.S. the previous month and continues to pose a threat to unvaccinated people across the country.
Of those Americans who died the previous month from the coronavirus, more than 99 percent were not vaccinated, according to federal health officials.