Billy Long: American babies and adults are paying for Biden's policies

(By Seventh District Congressman Billy Long)

Empty grocery shelves, barren car lots, and the list goes on due to supply chain issues and chip shortages. 

On Tuesday I learned from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that our Central Government knew in March of 2020 that a baby formula crisis was on the horizon. 

Now frantic parents across the country are seeing a severe shortage of baby formula. 

One issue is the FDA didn’t even recommend reducing import restrictions until this week. Also, the President said we couldn’t have solved it because we didn’t see it coming. We would have to “read minds” to have anticipated this. 

Sorry Mr. President but you didn't have to be Kreskin to see this crisis coming. Please pick up the phone and ask the FDA why they did not respond to the whistleblower report back in October or move for flexibility sooner than 3 months after the Abbott Nutrition plant was shut down. 

President Biden and his allies have tried blamed it all on COVID, even though these same shortages were not seen in 2020, when President Trump was in office during the pandemic. 

The truth is, President Biden’s policies have created an inflationary crisis, that affects everything in our lives, including our supply chain. 

My conscience, surely the Democrats know we can't keep printing money and flooding the monetary supply with the same without causing inflation to explode. $1.9 trillion here and $1.5 trillion there and pretty soon you're talking real money. Or freshly printed money that passes for real money.

Since January 20, 2021 President Biden has been on a tear to pursue policy after policy of Green New Deal fantasies, all of which has brought us runaway inflation that has reached a 40 year high. 

Cancelling the Keystone XL Pipeline and spending money like it was Monopoly money are huge contributing factors for where we find ourselves today. 

In a past 'Long's Short Report' I covered just how inflation affects the supply chain. When it costs more money to produce a product and transport it to store shelves, then either prices will go up, or less of that product will be made available.

This is what happened with baby formula, which saw some shortages occurring over the last several months. Then when the FDA shut down one of the largest baby formula plants in the country, and the situation only got worse. 

The Abbott Nutrition plant in Sturgis, Michigan was closed after four infants fell ill, with two of them dying due to bacteria after consuming products from the plant. But no investigation thus far has shown that the products from Abbott Nutrition were responsible for the infant deaths and illnesses. The plant has been closed for three months all while the formula shortage continues to worsen.

This week, the FDA announced that they would allow the Abbott Nutrition plant in Sturgis to reopen in the next few weeks. Abbott says that once they have reopened, they will be able to get products on the shelves in about six to eight weeks. 

The Biden Administration also announced that they would allow more imports of baby formula to the United States. Both of these actions should have been taken months ago, before the shortage got to the level that it did. They should have also authorized the Defense Production Act much sooner than two days ago.

This is another example of the Biden Administration being slow to respond to a crisis that they created, all while American babies and adults pay the price for their failed policies. 

Just this week two infants had to be hospitalized in Memphis for complications due to a shortage of their baby formula. Joe Biden did this. Next week the Energy and Commerce Committee that I serve on will be holding a hearing, so that we can get to the bottom of this baby formula shortage. I look forward to attending, and getting the answers the American people deserve.