President Biden defended his handling of a nationwide shortage of baby formula Friday, telling reporters that his administration could only have done better if they were “better mind readers.”
Republicans have hammered the White House response to a crisis that’s mushroomed since a recall at a Michigan factory in February. The criticism prompted the White House to add calls with formula manufacturers and distributors to the president’s Thursday schedule.
“Republicans have said that your administration should have anticipated this baby formula shortage,” CNN reporter Jeremy Diamond told Biden at a Rose Garden event where he urged cities to spend COVID-19 stimulus funds on cops.
“Are you satisfied with your administration’s response so far?” Diamond asked. “And some of the steps that you and your administration are taking now, including loosening these import requirements next week — could you have taken those steps sooner, before parents got to these shelves and couldn’t find formula?
“If we’d been better mind-readers I guess we could have,” Biden replied.
“But we moved as quickly as the problem became apparent to us,” he added. “And we have to move with caution as well as speed because we got to make sure what we’re getting is, in fact, first-rate product. That’s why the FDA has to go through the process.
The shortage has hit some states especially hard and is linked to a large recall by Abbott Nutrition due to safety concerns at its Sturgis, Mich. facility. Two infant deaths were believed to be linked to bacterial contamination of formula produced at the factory near the Indiana border.
For weeks, parents have complained on social media about difficulty finding formula, but the crisis gained national coverage this week as Congressional Republicans blasted Biden.
Shortly after a House GOP press conference on Thursday, the White House said the Food and Drug Administration would work to relax imports of formula, which could alleviate the crunch because 98% of US-consumed formula is domestically produced.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), the No. 3 House Republican and mother of a baby boy, led fellow GOPers in bashing Biden Thursday.
“I cannot think of a more harrowing, panicked crisis for parents to face than desperately trying to find food for their newborn babies,” she said.
Stefanik said her office first contacted the FDA about the issue in February and claimed that “we received no substantive response — Joe Biden simply has no plan.”
“My son Sam is nine months old. He is formula-fed and even in my trips to the grocery store in upstate New York, the shelves have been fairly empty,” she said. “There was an article just today about families having to drive hours.”
Stefanik added that “babies have been put to bed hungry” and argued that the White House “should have had a plan for the shortage months ago. Instead, bare-shelves Biden has continued to pass the buck.”
In addition to easing imports, the White House said Thursday it was easing rules to allow low-income mothers to purchase a greater variety of formula with grant money provided by states, as well as urging state officials and the Federal Trade Commission to crack down on price gouging.
