Senate Minority Whip Sen. John Thune (R-SD) on Monday blasted the Biden administration for its handling of the baby formula shortage after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) shut down Abbott Nutrition.
In an appearance on FNC’s “Fox & Friends,” Thune pushed back against Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s claim that the administration “acted from day one” to prevent a shortage. The South Dakota lawmaker lamented that it was “not a competent government.”
“I think, again, they didn’t catch it on day one, and as typical in this administration, they want to blame somebody else,” Thune outlined. “Well, they’re blaming Abbott and the other manufacturers. But the FDA should have known about this. They should have reacted a lot sooner. And this is another in a long list of examples in the Biden economy of products that people either can’t get or are paying a lot more for. This is the inflationary issue that they have created, and this shortage is another example, I think, of basic government incompetence. And I have said this before, but you can disagree or agree with them on policies and their ideology and all of that, and there is plenty to disagree with there, but on a basic level, this is a government that just doesn’t do things well. They are not a competent government.”
“It’s like so many other things in this administration — they always seem like they are caught off guard, but part of it is because they aren’t paying attention to the signals out there, they aren’t reacting quickly enough, and they aren’t putting, you know, solutions and mechanisms in place to respond to a crisis like this,” he added. “But this is a crisis for American families. They are paying more for everything, and in cases like baby formula, which, you know, basic survival items, when you can’t get it, that is a major crisis and one certainly that they should have anticipated a long time ago.”
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent