At a hearing of a subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee that was held last week, Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.), who has been designated the top Democrat on that particular panel, pushed back on the GOP obsession with assigning blame, particularly on the Biden administration, after shortages seen in supplies of infant formula.
The most pressing shortages have been undone, but as Porter explained it, the threat of something similar isn’t to be dismissed — and focusing on trying to use those circumstances as a political bludgeon doesn’t really do much of anything to actually help people! Porter instead noted some policy areas that could use work, like providing the necessary support for the federal agency known as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is involved with overseeing that supply chain. She even acknowledged concerns about consolidation in the business of infant formula, considering just a few companies are responsible for almost all of the supplies generally available to Americans.
“The thing about this issue is it doesn’t come down to the fault of one person, one agency, one company, or one political party,” Porter told her listeners. “We can’t fire or attack someone and expect formula contaminations and shortages to go away. That’s why today, I propose we go beyond the title of this hearing. We need to move beyond just assigning responsibility and toward delivering solutions that can prevent a shortage from happening again. If we are not using these hearings to identify worthy proposals and transform them into legislation, then we are failing to solve the problem.”
Porter also addressed the cuts to spending behind which Republicans have thrown their support. “That’s why it’s safe to say that the 22 percent cut to the FDA that Republicans have voted for would make this problem worse,” she said, describing what Democrats have asserted implementing Republicans’ plan would actually entail. Republicans put those cuts and a necessary increase to what’s called the debt ceiling in the same package, making it obviously difficult for Democrats concerned with maintaining effective levels of government funding to provide their support for the necessary debt action. The debt ceiling, otherwise known as the debt limit, is a legal boundary for expenses the government can incur to cover already approved expenditures, and it’s been raised many times with both Democrats and Republicans in the White House.
Republicans were, in fact, eager to use the situation with the formula for political attacks. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) even complained about providing formula for the use of infants among migrants encountered by U.S. authorities, as though the government should just let them starve. Check out Porter’s comments below:
