The Patriot Post® · The Awful Symbolism of a Baby Formula Shortage

Under President Let’s Go Brandon, our nation is ill-prepared to care for its most precious and helpless people. That’s the clear reality brought home by the increasingly problematic nationwide 40% shortage of baby formula. Such a thing should be unthinkable in the United States of America, yet here we are.

Now, don’t get us wrong. This is not a call for bolstering the cradle-to-grave welfare state built by Democrats from FDR to LBJ to LGB. But it is a sad commentary on a nation that was firing on all cylinders as recently as February 2020 under the far more able leadership of Donald Trump.

The man claiming to be here to fix all the things, Joe Biden, has done nothing but muck things up. The administration was well aware of the baby formula shortage at least by February — when the Food and Drug Administration made it worse. “The administration has been on this from the get-go,” insists Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council. “A lot of this emanated from a plant in Michigan that was producing formula that didn’t meet safety standards.”

In February, after two infants had died and two others became severely ill after consuming formula produced by Abbott Laboratories, the company issued a recall and shut down its Sturgis, Michigan, facility. The plant has still not reopened due to an FDA investigation, though Abbott announced that “after a thorough review of all available data, there is no evidence to link our formulas to these infant illnesses.”

What Deese didn’t tell you is that moms have known about supply issues since last fall. The price of formula is up 18% over last year, and retailers are now limiting quantities for customers.

How long will the shortage continue? Biden promises “there’s nothing more urgent we’re working on,” but he says the shortage is just transitory and shelves will be full again in a few weeks. Yet according to Perrigo Company PLC CEO Murray Kessler, the supply issues will remain for the “balance of the year.” That sure is inconvenient for Democrats because it means voters will be thinking about it — and a slew of other economic malaise — when they cast their ballots in November.

Women backed Biden over Trump 57-42 in 2020, but that huge margin likely won’t hold for the midterms. According to a Washington Times report on an April Marist poll, “Among parents with children younger than 18, registered voters said they would pick a Republican over a Democrat in November’s congressional elections by a nearly 30-point margin, 60% to 32%.”

Don’t mess with momma bears.

It’s interesting that this story is really gaining prominence so soon after the Supreme Court leak about overturning Roe v. Wade. Leftists, after all, routinely deride pro-lifers for not caring about babies after they’re born. That’s never been true, of course. Conservative pro-lifers have long been champions of whole families, pregnancy resource centers, sound education practices, and a slew of societal helps and benefits for children, including basic supply chain competence.

Democrats, by contrast, are the party of shutting down schools and only reopening them in order to indoctrinate and groom children. Democrats are the party sending pallets of baby formula to the border for migrants.

Democrats are the party running the protection racket that is the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) for low-income mothers. Long story short, food stamp regulations dictate a lot of what formula ends up on store shelves — or, in this case, doesn’t end up on shelves. That’s why Nancy Pelosi, of all people, is promising deregulation on this soon.

Perhaps most grotesquely, Democrats are the party that says, if inflation’s bad, just abort the kid. “The fact that things like inflation can happen and it can become more expensive to feed your kids and to fuel your car,” said Democrat Representative Katie Porter, “is exactly why people need to be able to be in charge of how many mouths they’re gonna have to feed.”

Boy, there’s a campaign slogan for you: “Life’s expensive in Joe Biden’s America, so just cut back on the number of mouths you have to feed.”