After Biden Administration’s announcement, Congresswoman calls on Senate to take up her bipartisan bill to overhaul U.S. national stockpile
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The White House yesterday announced that it will make N95 face masks free to all Americans beginning next week. The announcement comes less than two weeks after U.S. Reps. Elissa Slotkin (MI-08) and Tim Ryan (OH-13) publicly pressed the Biden administration to offer U.S.-made N95 and KN95 masks free to all Americans who want them.
"We ask that the administration consider using resources already allocated by Congress for COVID-19-related expenses to purchase and distribute these American-made, quality certified masks, to every American household that requests them," Slotkin and Ryan wrote in the letter. "It is time for the government to ensure all Americans have easy, regular access to high-quality, American-made masks."
The masks the administration plans to distribute will be sourced from the Strategic National Stockpile and will be available to Americans through local pharmacies and community health centers. Slotkin applauded the announcement from the White House and called on the Senate to swifty take up her Strengthening America's Strategic National Stockpile Act, a bill to overhaul the national stockpile and make more critical supplies, like PPE, in the United States.
"Today's news is going to help Michiganders and Americans across the country protect themselves from the virus," Slotkin said in response to the news. "But the really new thing with this announcement is what it means for *American* manufacturers of PPE. In 2020, we were almost wholly dependent on China for these supplies. Since then, American manufacturers have worked hard to meet increased demand for PPE, and there's no reason we should continue to depend on other countries for items so key to our own health. Since the Spring of 2020, I've been obsessed with this issue. Now it's time for the next step: we need to now replenish and revamp our Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) to make sure we're never again as unprepared as we were in the early days of COVID-19. I'm urging the Senate to immediately take up my bipartisan package to boost domestic production of critical medical supplies, reduce our dependence on foreign manufacturers, and improve maintenance and oversight of the SNS. Let's make this commitment to American PPE permanent."
The Strengthening America's Strategic National Stockpile Act, which is led by Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) in the Senate, was introduced by eight Republicans and eight Democrats in the House. The bipartisan legislation includes a package of bills that would make long overdue changes to the SNS including:
- Improving maintenance of the stockpile to ensure stockpile items are in good working order and ready to use if and when a crisis hits;
- Increasing manufacturing of critical supplies in America to diversify sources of personal protective equipment and partner with industry to replenish existing stocks;
- Providing more federal resources to states to expand or maintain their own strategic stockpiles; and
- Bringing transparency to stockpile allocations by requiring a report to Congress on all requests for stockpile supplies during the pandemic and the response to each request.
Original source can be found here.
