The debate focuses on a 1950 law, but it's also about whether and when the president should take charge in a pandemic.
, in particular, said it’s partnering with General Electric, which already makes ventilators, to build units in idling automobile plants., especially if the auto companies can help existing ventilator manufacturers get their hands on essential, hard-to-find components.
But it will take time for Ford’s factories to retool and the CEO said on Monday that he thought the earliest machines could roll off their production lines was June.Meanwhile, governors are not only competing against foreign countries. They’re also competing against each other. “I will contract with a company for 1,000 masks,” Cuomo said on Sunday. “They will call back 20 minutes later and say the price just went up because they had a better offer and I understand that. Other states who are desperate for these goods literally offer more money than we were paying. And it is just a race that is raising prices higher and higher. We even have hospitals competing against other hospitals.” “You’re basically putting these manufacturers instead of the government in the position of deciding who gets what first,” said Mulligan, who was director for preparedness and response in the Justice Department’s National Security Division from 2017 to 2018.President Donald Trump suggested that using his authority under the Defense Production Act would be akin to a Venezuela-like takeover of industry.assistant secretary for intergovernmental affairs at the Department of Homeland Security during the Obama administration, told HuffPost.A group of governors, including Cuomo and Pritzker, has called on Trump to fix this by using the Defense Production Act, rather than just invoking it. And they have allies on Capitol Hill.from Democratic Sens. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Jeff Merkley of Oregon would instruct the president to make purchases of protective equipment under the law. A House counterpart calls on Trump to “make urgent use” of the law. The House bill is bipartisan and one of its Republican co-sponsors, Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, told thethat he rejects the idea that using the law amounts to nationalizing industry. It would merely “allow the government to direct businesses to make certain supplies that are desperately needed in our fight against the coronavirus,” Upton said. “The companies would remain private.”The ultimate impact of using the Defense Production Act would depend on several unknown variables, including the magnitude of existing supply shortfalls and industry’s ability to make up for them. That is why the first step in a crisis like this is typically to make a formal assessment of existing supplies, possible needs and industry capacity. That may be happening now. In just the last week, during the daily White House briefings on the pandemic response, Pence has mentioned several times that the federal government is overseeing a nationwide inventory of ventilators. At Tuesday’s briefing, he even had some specific statistics on shipments of goods to cities and states. But this has all happened at a time when patient surges are already pushing hospitals in Detroit, New Orleans, New York and Seattle to the brink.Juliette Kayyem, a former Department of Homeland Security official It didn’t have to take this long. Intelligence agencies were warning the White House about a pandemic crisis as early as January,
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