Food security is national security.
And right now we have a food security crisis for the most vulnerable of
Americans, the ones that we cherish the most and that's our babies.
This is completely squarely on the shoulders of the Biden administration and
the democrats that are controlling our government.
>> So that is just a representative sample of what the right, members of the right
the wackos on the right have been saying for about a week and a half now.
That is that we have this crisis which we do, that it's entirely the fault of
the Biden administration, which I don't understand what that's supposed to mean.
And they definitely wouldn't think that if this had happened while Trump was still
president.
But that most of all something needs to be done,
you've got to deal with this crisis, but not in any way that we can come up with.
Because in attempting to fix this crisis that woman,
you just saw their representative Marjorie Greene was not a part of the solution.
They have this bill to try to get more low income Americans to have access to
the funds necessary to buy this and she voted against it.
She wasn't alone, nine republicans in the House of Representatives voted against
a bill that aims to facilitate the purchase of baby formula for
those on low income federal support programs.
I don't know if maybe they were watching the Damage Report over the last week when
I was talking specifically about well, if you all of a sudden are so
concerned about people having access to baby formula maybe going forward we could
increase funding for it.
But in any event they're not for that.
And this was the access to Baby Formula Act.
It would allow more people on WIC the Women, Infant and
Children program to get access to formula.
It did pass by the way, it was 414-9, which means that the vast,
vast majority of republicans crossed the aisle to support this as one would,
well maybe not expect, but hope you'd hope that they did this and they did but
nine voted against it.
And it is the exact ones that you would think, Representatives Andy Biggs,
Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Louie Gohmert, Paul Gosar,
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Clay Higgins, Thomas Massie and Chip Roy.
I don't have an answer to the question you might be thinking of which is what is
wrong with these people?
But at least one of them said, what is wrong with this bill?
Representative Roy said, the only way to get more formula to American families is
to fix the crony policies that prevent more U.S companies from producing it.
Remove barriers to innovation and allow imports from trusted nations,
the legislation democrat put democrats put forward does none of that.
This shortage is the direct result of unnecessary federal regulations and
of a bloated bureaucracy that failed to recognize the problem before it
spiraled out of control.
This body should be solving problems not making them worse.
So of course there's no mention there of the, what are they calling it,
the operation fly formula,
which is specifically to import formula from the trusted nations.
He talks about what the crony policies are that presumably Biden set
up in the last year to limit what companies can make formula.
That's a spicy theory let's hear more about that from Chip Roy.
I don't think he's got anymore because that exists only inside of his his own
skull.
Unnecessary federal regulations I'm going to assume is a reference to the fact that
one of the factories that make formula shut down because they had contaminated
their formula and multiple infants had already died as a result of it.
He apparently thought that that was a bad choice.
They should have kept going, they should have kept shipping contaminated formula
that had already killed multiple infants out.
Now of course, he doesn't have the balls to actually say that,
he's not gonna say, you can't make formula without breaking some infants I suppose.
But that is what he actually means there, Jessica.
What do you think about them turning against this bill?
>> Yeah, insane, is there a better distillation of what's going on with
populist right wing politics?
I mean, they say they care about the Americans that are struggling to buy baby
formula and then they don't vote for a bill that will make it more accessible,
more easy for these families to buy it.
And then they point to the corporations, okay,
well four companies were controlling the baby formula market back in 2018,
they controlled 89% of the market before Biden got in office.
And if your solution is we've got to break up the trust in the baby formula market.
What are we gonna do with the instability in the meantime when we have a shortage
before we get to the point where there are new baby formula businesses producing
formula and we diversify the market.
We need something to feed to the babies in the meantime, it's pretty clear, but
we're definitely not gonna see them introduce any legislation to bust up trust
because they don't actually wanna bust up trust.
They wanna keep taking money from corporations and
just pass some kind of flagship legislation in the meantime.
And say things like, we really care about the baby formula shortage, but
we're probably not even gonna see them introduce a bill that does something
different in the meantime.
Because it's not about addressing the problem,
it's just about staying in office and protecting corporations for them.
>> Exactly and they'll forget about this as soon as they're back in power,
like it's the same exact thing as the gasoline.
They were freaking out about the rising cost of gasoline and
then every single thing that was proposed to actually fix that they were against.
They're against this, are they in favor of the Defense Production Act being invoked,
are they making big public statements about finally Biden is doing
the right thing.
No they've completely ignored it about shipping in the formula.
No they're ignoring it, trying to do the funding a second bill to send money
to the FDA to deal with supply chain issues having to do with formula do they
support that, are they excited about that?
No they don't care about literally any of this and as soon as some other issue is
dominating the news they will move on to it a year to year or two from now.
If there are tons of kids like in low income families that desperately need
access to formula and the money isn't there are they gonna be like answering
your phone calls about that?
No they'll have moved on they literally don't care, this is about stopping things.
And you cannot come up with something so
reasonable that at least one of them won't turn against that.
As as an example of that they had this bill that was meant to
condemn the rise of anti Semitism.
One republican lawmaker opposed everyone else was agreed on it 420-1 representative
Thomas Massie who opposed the formula thing, he represented the only no vote.
Eight other republicans didn't vote, it's not that they are against condemning
anti Semitism, they just don't really have a position on it I suppose.
I'm sure they will be ready to launch accusations of anti Semitism
against Ilhan Omar or Rashida Talib or whatever the next chance they get.
But when they had a chance to have their name down on condemning it, I abstain, I
suppose I'll just throw out, we don't have time to dive into the substance of it.
But mitt Romney and
a few other republicans also introduced a bill that would preemptively bar the biden
administration from canceling student loan debt.
Because again, all of this is about stopping the government from functioning
in even its most basic ways.
Any final thoughts, Jessica?
Yeah.
I mean when it comes to the baby formula shortage,
when I look at this issue, I think, you know, food is a basic human right?
It's always something that's difficult for families to buy.
It costs $428 per month on average.
And this is always a problem.
And Republicans don't care about it until it's in the news and
they can make it about white babies dying and immigrants having formula and
the Biden administration's failing.
But it's always a problem.
And if there's someone who's positioned to do something about it,
it's our elected officials, but they don't and they won't.
Yeah.
Mhm