Duckworth calls for FEMA probe on PPE
Project Air Bridge is a boondoggle benefiting private medical companies, charges senator
An O’Hare Airport worker oversees delivery of personal protective equipment from China to the state of Illinois. (Illinois Governor’s Office)
By Ted Cox
U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth is calling for an extensive investigation into the Federal Emergency Management Agency over charges that it’s confiscating critical medical supplies in the coronavirus crisis and using a so-called air bridge supply chain to benefit private medical firms.
Duckworth announced in a news release Monday that she’d submitted a letter to the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security calling for a probe into FEMA’s Supply Chain Stabilization Task Force. She charged that “public reporting has shown possible evidence of mismanagement and secrecy around Project Air Bridge and raised concerns regarding the Task Force’s ability to appropriately distribute the life-saving equipment to state and local governments.”
Project Air Bridge is charged with delivering critical medical supplies to the United States in the battle against COVID-19. But Duckworth echoed Gov. J.B. Pritzker in stating that it was actually distributing the equipment to private medical companies for profit in the midst of the pandemic.
“There appear to be dramatic discrepancies between public descriptions of Project Air Bridge’s purported achievements and federal acquisition data,” Duckworth stated in the letter. “More troubling, FEMA appears to be spending taxpayer dollars on subsidizing private medical supply company shipments of company inventory into the United States, without gaining much, if any, public or mission benefit.”
Duckworth quoted FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate as stating outright in a Washington Post article: “The fact is you’re using taxpayer dollars to distribute private resources.”
Duckworth also dismissed FEMA denials that the agency has been confiscating personal protective equipment and other medical supplies key to combating COVID-19. She charged that FEMA administrators had made “contradictory statements” on whether the agency is actively confiscating supplies when given the opportunity.
“The behavior of Republican and Democratic governors alike casts doubt on that assertion,” she wrote. “The governor of Massachusetts reported that FEMA confiscated a shipment of 1 million N-95 respirator masks that his state had ordered at a port of entry in New York. In my home state of Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker was forced to discreetly and directly charter international flights delivering PPE and other medical supplies to our state due to fears that FEMA would seize the shipments upon arrival for undisclosed purposes or to replenish the national stockpile.”
ABC News ran video in April showing delivery of medical supplies via a FedEx plane at O’Hare International Airport reportedly supplied by the Illinois Governor’s Office. Pritzker has been cagey about talking about the supplies, but has mentioned concerns about them being confiscated, along with complaints that Project Air Bridge wasn’t serving states in delivering medical supplies, but was instead delivering supplies to private firms serving their usual clients at a profit.
Pritzker has said the medical supplies are being delivered to “profit-making private businesses … who are getting the government to deliver to them their goods. … Then they get to decide where those goods go.”
As such, Duckworth urged U.S. Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari to investigate those charges and whether they constitute “serious deficiencies in the Supply Chain Stabilization Task Force's effort to respond to the deadly coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.” She added, “The failure to transparently share information with governmental entities that should be FEMA’s state and local partners, along with the lack of information pertaining to the Task Force's operations, outcomes and management, raise serious questions over whether FEMA is complying with all applicable statutory requirements, regulatory requirements, and agency policies, procedures, and practices.
“This Task Force’s mission could not be more important: our health-care heroes, which includes support staff and first responders serving on the front-lines of the COVID-19 pandemic, desperately need robust access to personal protective equipment (PPE) and critical medical supplies.”