”I am here today to say to parents: You aren’t alone. At the highest levels of Joe’s administration, he and his team understand what you are going through. They won’t stop until every parent can get the formula their child needs.”
That was FLOTUS Dr. Jill Biden on Sunday when the first shipment of desperately-needed baby formula arrived from overseas. She says that President Biden understands —to be clear, he doesn’t. As far as we know, President Biden isn’t bottle feeding any tiny tots in the Oval —don’t patronize us.
But this very short soundbite is indicative of a scary pattern the Biden Administration seems to be stuck in: cause a crisis with incompetence; apologize for said crisis; claim to “understand.”
See Afghanistan, inflation, and gas prices (Joe flies around in a 747 that we pay for, but somehow truly, deeply understands the pain at the pump).
Biden & Co. cause problems —then apologize. And the formula crisis is no different.
According to the New York Post, in October 2021 an anonymous whistleblower sent a 34-page report on the unsanitary conditions at the Abbott baby formula plant in Sturgis, MI. But Frank Yiannas, the deputy commissioner for food policy and response, didn’t see it until February.
Why? It got lost in the mailroom. How incompetent does that sound?
“It wasn’t sent to me and it wasn’t shared with me internally. How does this happen?” Yiannas admitted to The Washington Post. “There were early signals and in any safety profession you want to take those seriously to stop the domino effect. That didn’t happen.”
“Why didn’t we act more quickly on the complaints and the whistleblower report? Who knew what when?” Yiannas told the newspaper. “Those are going to be some of the tough questions that will have to be answered.”
A House committee started to dig into this incompetence during a hearing on Wednesday.
“Hard copies addressed to [FDA] individuals were not forwarded from the FDA mailrooms, likely due to COVID-19-related mail routing issues,” the FDA told the House panel. We also learned that digital copies of the complaint never materialized.
Current FDA commissioner Robert Califf called the events a “technical issue.”
“Why did it take an onslaught of national media attention for the Biden administration to act with a sense of urgency required to address an infant formula shortage?” Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-VA) asked at the hearing.
Califf copped to the FDA being “too slow and there were decisions that were suboptimal along the way.”
Yeah —shutting down the Abbott plant and recalling several baby formula products, triggering a nationwide formula shortage and endangering the lives of America’s babies?
“Suboptimal.”
What a comfort it is knowing President Binde is right there with us.
