President Joe Biden says only “mind readers” could have foreseen the baby formula shortage. But don’t add telepathy to New York’s Rep. Elise Stefanik’s list of abilities: She saw it coming simply because she actually watches out for her constituents.
The crisis now has 43% of formula out of stock, with no clear timeline to restore supply. By the Food and Drug Administration’s own estimates, this impacts the terrified parents of at least 2.7 million babies — families that, with the rest of us, are also struggling with Bidenflation.
The clear cause was the Feb. 17 FDA shutdown of an Abbott Labs formula plant in Michigan — which led Stefanik to immediately start raising alarms.(The FDA and Abbott, thank goodness, have now agreed on a plan to re-open the plant, but no word on when.) She’s kept up the fight, demanding answers on FDA plans to address the crisis in a recent letter to its commissioner.
Meanwhile, Team Biden kept mum until shortages made the news, whereupon it offered its trademark mix of cluelessness, confusion, business-bashing, smarmy question-dodging and aggressive dismissals, including an outright giggle on the topic from new White House chief flack Karine Jean-Pierre.
Administration allies in Congress and the media have also tried to smear Stefanik for pointing out that at least some formula is being sent south to supply infants in border custody — a need that wouldn’t exist if Biden hadn’t effectively opened the border to illegal migrant waves, another issue where the congresswoman has long hit the administration hard.
The campaign to demonize Stefanik reached a new low after the Buffalo massacre, as the more deranged corners of the media and Twitter claimed she supports the shooter’s ravings about “great replacement theory,” simply because she’s charged that Democrats hope to turn illegal migrants into future Democratic voters.
It’s as if the entire left, including the administration’s top ranks, has concluded that the answer to every crisis is to change the subject to hard-left obsessions rather than focus on, say, getting that baby-formula plant cleaned and back into operation.
Another lowlight of this “attack rather than do your job” strategy was the tweet some White House flunky sent out under the president’s name Friday that making sure the “wealthiest corporations” pay their “fair share” is essential to fighting inflation, an absurd claim Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was still pushing Monday on CNBC.
Maybe Stefanik can read their minds and tell us what the heck they’re thinking?