Perhaps like many of you, I get an email newsletter usually on Sunday night from our local congress member Mariannette Miller-Meeks. This week it came on Monday. My guess as to why is that the congress member had to spend some amount of time working on lies that blamed President Biden for the current baby formula in America.

Actually, I doubt she worked on anything, but just regurgitated Republican talking points probably without even reading them. Here is the statement blaming Biden on the shortage of baby formula from her newsletter:

“The Biden Administration’s supply chain is now further impacting working families with formula shortages being reported in stores across the United States. That is why this past week I joined over 100 of my colleagues in a letter calling on the Biden Administration and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to immediately address the ongoing baby formula shortage.

America’s mothers and their children need access to baby formula. The unaddressed supply chain crisis and record-high inflation have hurt American workers and families, and are now harming our most vulnerable. The FDA and President Biden need to act immediately before more families are hurt. We cannot sit idly by and do nothing to help.”

First any idiot in America should know that the President nor any other government official has anything to do with supply chains. But as the Republican Party has done for decades, Miller-Meeks tries to create a scare picture in people’s heads. Supply chains are created and run by private industry.

Second, by the time Miller-Meeks and her accomplices wrote their letter, the Biden Administration was already acting to see where they could impact getting the baby formula to consumers quickly. 

The problems they found were that the baby formula industry is a near monopoly with one manufacturer, Abbott Labs, producing a major amount of the baby formula for the country. Abbott closed its factory in Sturgis, Michigan in February due to bacterial contaminated baby formula that resulted in the death of two infants and the illness of others.  

Abbott has not restarted that facility. One possible alternative – importing baby formula from foreign countries including Canada – was short circuited by trade deals negotiated by the Trump Administration. The Biden Administration has nothing to do with either problem. They have, however found work arounds to the trade issues and has worked with Abbott to get them back to production. The Biden Administration did invoke the Defense Production Act to focus resources on this issue.

Meanwhile, when given a chance to put her money where her mouth is, Miller-Meeks voted AGAINST! a bill for emergency funding to help solve this problem. She was not alone as only 12 Republicans voted yes on this very critical issue. All Iowa Republicans voted against this critical bill.

Miller-Meeks is simply out of touch with reality and Americans and Iowans, not only on this issue but with most everything. She then tries to blame her sloppy work on a President who was already on top of the situation with lies. 

Of course she wasn’t the only Iowan to try to pull this stunt. Ashley Hinson was right there with Miller-Meeks. From Hinson’s statement on the issue from her website:

“We need to address this supply chain crisis right now. Families deserve solutions. The Biden Administration ignored the warning signs that a formula shortage was imminent, sitting on their hands until shelves were bare. Their incompetence underscores the need for funding to come with guardrails and accountability for the FDA’s failures. Throwing additional money at a problem is the wrong approach. American families need a plan to fix this crisis and get baby formula back on the shelves. And they don’t need us spending more of their hard-earned money to do it.”

Like Miller-Meeks, Hinson is out of touch with reality. Like Miller-Meeks and Randy Feenstra when the time came to do something they and Hinson voted NO for the emergency funding to address this critical issue. Be sure to ask her about this if she ever has a town hall.

Jeff Tiedrich who often makes concise observations on Twitter offered this comment on the Republican response to the baby formula crisis:

Jeff Tiedrich tweet on GOP baby formula vote:

“holy fucking shit, Republicans are voting against baby food because it they hope the shortage will make Joe Biden look bad. what kind of shithole party does that”