Press Release - Ranking Member Cole Hearing Remarks on H.R. 7790

As delivered during today's hearing:

We're here again on yet another additional item: H.R. 7790, the Infant Formula Supplemental Appropriations Act.

As with every crisis Democrats are trying to respond to this week, this bill is yet another case of creating the appearance of responding without actually doing anything, and I, for one, am frustrated. While it's clear that I personally have no use for baby formula and haven't for a rather long time, this issue is too important to just put forward a political messaging bill. Real lives are at stake.

Instead of agreeing to real, bipartisan solutions to address this issue facing constituents in every congressional district, the Majority thinks giving another $28 million to the FDA is the solution? Give me a break.

For the last three months, the United States has slowly fallen into the grips of an infant formula supply crisis. At present, reports indicate that more than 40 percent of formula is out of stock across the country. This is especially apparent with specialty formulas, which are becoming much more difficult to find. As parents become increasingly desperate to find formula to feed their babies, we are hearing more and more stories of people driving hundreds of miles over many long hours on the mere rumor of finding formula.

And yesterday, HHS Secretary Becerra stated in an interview on CNN that he has been aware of this crisis beginning last year. If this is accurate, we had ample opportunity to address this before it became a life and death situation for so many people.

Unfortunately, the bill the Majority is now proposing will do nothing to address this crisis and will do nothing to provide support to parents and get them the formula their babies need. Instead, the bill provides a $28 million check to the FDA with no offsets. That's it. No idea what they will do with it. No idea how it will help. No solutions or path to success at all. Just millions more to the FDA, just two months after they already received a $102 million budget increase in the FY22 appropriations bill.

There are many things that could be done that this bill does not do. This bill does not force the FDA to develop a plan to address the shortage. It does not take into account excess stocks of formula at federal agencies that could be redirected to American households immediately. It does not mandate funds be used to rush formulas to where they are needed the most. And it does not re-direct unspent dollars that are no longer needed elsewhere toward providing a real solution to this crisis.

All in all, it's a sorry state of affairs. This could be and should have been a bipartisan bill, but instead, the Speaker and the Majority decided to go it alone, to make it look like they were doing something about this crisis without actually doing anything. And sadly, that continues to be the Majority's modus operandi this entire week, as it has been this entire Congress.

I hope the House will do the right thing, reject this measure and send a clear message to the Speaker that the American people demand real, bipartisan solutions. On a crisis this important and this critical, the American people deserve more than a talking point. They deserve something real.

###

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.