Trump's lie about Obama leaving him an "empty shelf" debunked

[Rorey]

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/trump-falsely-claims-he-inherited-empty-stockpile/

Because of lack of funding, the N95 masks weren't restocked the way that would have been ideal. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that fuckface McConnell had something to do with funding not being available. (Excuse my language. I'm just so )

[dalton99a]

1. Trump's golf trips are more important - Cost to taxpayers so far: About $133,000,000

[tman]

2. It doesn't matter. There's been nearly no aggressive push back from Obama officials

The war on truth is being lost.

If trump wins,"staying above the fray" will be seen for the foolishness that it is.

[crickets]

4. There are no Obama officials. He's no longer in office.

It's journalists who are responsible for tracking down the facts and reporting them, and in this case someone did.

[tman]

5. Thanks for the laugh

If the strategy of Democrats is to passively wait for the media to check Trump, we're in for a world of hurt come November.

[crickets]

7. So aren't you a Democrat? Get on out there and show us how it's done. nt

[Rorey]

10. As much as I'd like to see push back

At this moment in time, when we haven't even reached the peak of this pandemic, President Obama won't be engaging in a war of words with 45.

45 and Repukes will be held to account. I'm pretty sure I read that there will be a COVID-19 commission, just as there was a 9/11 commission.

[onenote]

3. Not completely

From the linked factcheck:

Some Supplies Not Fully Restocked
It’s true that some of the supplies in the stockpile that governors are currently asking the government to send to states were not completely restocked during Obama’s presidency.

For example, the Washington Post reported on March 10 that the reserves of the N95 respirator masks were not “significantly restored” after tens of millions of the devices were distributed from the stockpile during the H1N1 influenza pandemic of 2009. Medical personnel wear the respirators because they can “filter out at least 95% of airborne particles,” according to the Food and Drug Administration.

There seems to be evidence that the Stockpile wasn't kept up as well as it should in Obama's second term. But trump had three years to do something and he did nothing -- or worse that nothing.

[crickets]

6. Part of Obama's problem was that Mitch McConnell

and John Boehner (yikes, he's not missed) were chiseling away at the funding.

I thought some of the comments toward the end of the OP's article dovetailed nicely with another conversation on DU today about how the US (in addition to GM's efforts) should be manufacturing our own masks.

One of the reasons for the current supply shortage, she said: “We’ve allowed our own national capacity to manufacture things to degrade and in some places go away. And we’ve done that for cost-efficiency sake.”

She later added: “What we need is not a big stockpile. We need a new strategy. We need to use the technologies we have now to create the capacity to respond to something in close to real-time.”

That means being able to “rapidly design and manufacture what we need, when we need it, and the quantities demanded,” she said.

Will you look at that: jobs! Just as there was no effort to restock, no one in the current WH will get near any responsible or workable plan for this though.

[Rorey]

9. +1

McConnell can rot in hell, AFAIC.

[Rorey]

8. Just beyond that in the article

Limited funding was the reason given.

Greg Burel, who was the director of the Strategic National Stockpile for more than 12 years until he retired in January, recently told CBS News: “We didn’t receive funds to replace those masks, protective gear and the anti-virals that we used for H1N1.”

He told Vice News that he decided to use the program’s limited funding to instead purchase vaccines, flu medications and other pharmaceuticals.

“We had to trade off those funds that we had, and we chose to invest in those lifesaving drugs that would not be available from any other source, in the quantity needed, and in time. I definitely want to see my healthcare workers protected; that’s very important. But if I’m thinking, ‘Do I buy this many masks to protect this many workers, or do I buy this many medicines to keep people safe that we can’t get elsewhere?’ there’s no easy answer here,” Burel said.

In other cases, the Obama administration’s attempts to add more equipment, such as ventilators, to the stockpile were not successful.