North Country Rep. Elise Stefanik voted for and against two bills this week designed to address the baby formula shortage. She also introduced her own bill, which would allow imports of baby formula and change how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration would recall formulas in the future.

Stefanik, who is a new mother herself, voted to advance the Access to Baby Formula Act, which passed the House 414-9. This act, if approved by the Senate, would temporarily waive exclusive contracts between states and baby formula manufacturers and allow over 6 million people enrolled in the Women, Infants and Children program to purchase more brands of formula at a discount, but only during emergencies.

Stefanik also voted against legislation that would give the FDA $28 million in emergency funding aimed at addressing the current formula shortage by funding inspections of formula imports and preventing future shortages. The Infant Formula Supplemental Appropriations Act, in addition to giving the FDA $28 million in emergency funding, would improve data collection on formula and fund efforts to prevent fraudulent products from being placed on shelves. The bill passed the House 231-192.

Stefanik instead proposed her own legislation to allow more foreign imports of formula, which does not include new FDA funding.

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Criticism from Castelli

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Matt Castelli, a Democrat running against Stefanik for her House seat in the Nov. 8 election, accused Stefanik of “fake outrage” over the formula shortage because of her vote against the Infant Formula Supplemental Appropriations Act.

“By voting down funds to safely get formula back on the shelves and prevent the next shortage, Stefanik … has shown that her true agenda was never to help end the crisis.”

Castelli said Stefanik “rejects sensible solutions to serious problems, choosing performance theater and political noise over the needs of families.”

Stefanik, however, claims this bill “does nothing to get baby formula back on shelves for American families or ensure a crisis like this one never happens again.”

She said the bill “is simply throwing more taxpayer dollars at FDA bureaucrats while failing to hold the Biden administration accountable for creating this crisis.”

“Throwing more money at this problem is clearly not the solution and will only worsen the skyrocketing inflation Americans are facing,” she said in an email.

She argued that, two months ago, the FDA got a $102 million budget increase, including an $11 million increase specifically for maternal and infant health and nutrition, and that hasn’t stopped the shortage.

“Just giving the Biden administration more money will not address the immediate crisis or correct how it made these shortages worse,” Stefanik said of the Infant Formula Supplemental Appropriations Act.

She did not respond to a question about if the FDA can take on the requirements in her bill without more funding.

Stefanik’s Senior Advisor Alex Degrasse accused Castelli of helping President Joe Biden “cover up” alleged FDA “negligence and malpractice.”

“The only reason that Biden even acknowledged there was a problem is because Congresswoman Stefanik blasted him from the House steps forcing him to get on the phone with the formula manufacturers,” Degrasse claimed.

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Access to Baby Formula Act

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In the U.S., four companies dominate 90% of the formula industry, according to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. The federal government is the largest purchaser of formula. Half of all formula sales in the U.S. are through the WIC’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program, according to the Access to Baby Formula Act.

Through this nutrition program, states contract with formula manufactures for cheaper product so WIC recipients can buy it at a discount.

In return, that manufacturer gets sole rights to WIC discounts and becomes the dominant brand in that state by being the most affordable brand and through run-off sales of it being one of the most common regional brand names.

Abbott has a contract monopoly in two-thirds of all states, and National Public Radio reported earlier this week that it produces up to one-fifth of all domestic infant formula.

The Access to Baby Formula Act would open these contracts up to temporarily cover more subsidized formulas from more brands in emergencies such as this shortage. This bill would also require formula manufacturers, in order to get a WIC contract, to submit a plan to the USDA and FDA on how it would protect WIC participants if there’s a supply chain disruption.

Stefanik said this will “protect families from future supply chain shortages.”

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Babies Need Formula Now Act

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Stefanik introduced the Babies Need Formula Now Act on Thursday along with Republican legislators Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, Congresswoman Ashley Hinson of Iowa, and Congresswoman Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma.

This legislation would authorize the FDA to allow the import of baby formula from other countries and would temporarily lift restrictions on infant formula purchased from “countries that have similar safety standards as the United States.” Formula imports are strictly regulated and taxed in the U.S., making them rare.

It would also lift FDA restrictions on new types and brands of formula from entering the market. Stefanik called these restrictions “barriers” that are keeping parents from having more options and companies from having more competition.

The bill also “adds oversight and accountability to the FDA to make sure it is doing its job and acting quickly to maintain a healthy and safe supply of formula,” Stefanik said.

Her bill would mandate that the FDA consider the impact to the supply of formula before issuing a recall if that recall is for labeling unrelated to the quality of the product. When the FDA does issue a recall, it would require the administration to notify Congress and provide a plan to address any resulting supply issues.

Stefanik said this will require “coordination” between the FDA and the manufacturer of the recalled formula to resolve any issues as soon as possible.

Degrasse claims that Pelosi is blocking this bill from getting on the House floor. The Enterprise has not been able to verify this, but Pelosi supported different legislation rather than Stefanik’s.

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Future of the bills

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The two bills voted on Wednesday passed the House and will now be voted on in the Senate, but will need unanimous or significant bipartisan support in the way the Senate plans to vote on them.

New York Senator and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Wednesday that he plans to try to pass them quickly through a unanimous consent request. But this sort of request only needs one objection to be shot down and he’s banking on no senator voting against it.

Otherwise, 10 Republican senators would need to vote to pass the bills. House Republicans, including Stefanik, were critical of the Infant Formula Supplemental Appropriations Act, saying it would give a “blank check” to the FDA.

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Blame

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When the Abbott Nutrition Labs formula plant in Michigan was shut down by the FDA in February due to bacteria in some of its formula, which hospitalized several infants and killed two, Stefanik was aware of the crisis.

She has a 9-month-old son, Sam, and said he is formula fed.

“As a new mother, I know how important it is for families to have certainty,” she wrote in a statement. “I noticed that the shelves of formula at local stores started getting more and more bare for the last few months — and then dramatically bare within the last month.”

She said she also heard from concerned families in her district.

She penned a letter to the FDA in February, saying it was “unacceptable” to allow Abbott’s products to continue to be sold for months after the hospitalizations before the recall.

“This impossible situation for parents may have been largely averted had the FDA acted swiftly upon initial reports of illness,” Stefanik wrote in her letter.

Stefanik said she didn’t get a response from the FDA until May 11.

Stefanik calls the shortage “Joe Biden’s baby formula crisis,” and said he was “asleep at the switch” and that the FDA “dragged their feet.”

“Joe Biden himself said he couldn’t mind read and was unable to predict this,” she wrote, “meanwhile families were sounding the alarm.”

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Formula for migrant babies, “pedo grifters” claims

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Stefanik was criticized last week for calling for the U.S. to stop supplying formula to migrant babies detained with families at the southern border.

“The White House, House Dems, & usual pedo grifters are so out of touch with the American people that rather than present ANY PLAN or urgency to address the nationwide baby formula crisis, they double down on sending pallets of formula to the southern border,” she wrote in a tweet.

She framed this as “stand(ing) up for American families” in a press release.

Ruben Gallego, a Democratic House member from Arizona, called her statement “anti-American.”

“Do we just starve these babies?” he asked on Twitter. “The parents are locked up they can’t go shop for an alternative. So you are asking for the government to deliberately starve children?”

Stefanik stood by her call for baby formula to stop going to migrant babies on Thursday.

“I will not stop standing up for American mothers, fathers and grandparents who are trying to feed their babies,” Stefanik wrote in an email. “After all (White House Press Secretary) Jen Psaki (said), ‘It’s morally the right thing to do.'”

Psaki’s comment was about the White House continuing to provide formula to babies the U.S. holds in detention facilities at the southern border.

Stefanik’s use of the phrase “pedo grifters” also got a lot of heat for being vague and inflammatory.

Stefanik’s office said in an email to the Enterprise that “‘pedo grifters’ refers to the Lincoln Project.” The Lincoln Project is a political action committee formed by Republicans who opposed Donald Trump. Her office said she was responding to a “vicious smear” the Lincoln Project made about Stefanik’s statements on the formula crisis.

Lincoln Project co-founder John Weaver has been accused by 21 men of sending sexually explicit messages to teenage boys. Weaver is no longer associated with the Lincoln Project.