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During a press call this afternoon, former HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, former Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin, former top HHS Official and current Protect Our Care Chair Leslie Dach highlighted the danger of the GSA’s obstruction of the Biden transition effort during this ongoing pandemic.
By preventing the Biden team from accessing crucial documents, resources, lines of communication, and information, the GSA is single-handedly hampering the incoming Administration’s ability to combat the coronavirus pandemic on day one. It’s a politically-motivated decision that will cost American lives.
As the virus spirals out of control, it’s clear that the outgoing Trump Administration is determined to continue making the pandemic worse just as they have since the onset of this crisis. Their refusal to concede defeat and engage in a cooperative transition process will have deadly and disastrous consequences, and unfortunately it seems the GSA’s obstruction will only be part of a larger problem.
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“We are in the midst of a crisis and what we know is every lost day is a lost life and a lost livelihood,” said former Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius. “Joe Biden has said over and over again, tackling this virus – getting a handle on the virus – is the only way we get the economy back on track and save lives at the same time. So, every day wasted is a life that is also unfortunately wasted. So, here’s what absolutely needs to happen immediately: the election needs to be certified by the GSA to give the Biden transition team access to have key conversations.”
“We saw pre-election, a health crisis turn into a political crisis, into a political issue. Which is something, as a physician, was so disappointing to see because this should never have become a political issue. Now we see this pandemic is growing worse and out of control, it really is time – now that this election is over – to put that aside and to bring these processes together,” said former Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin. “Right now we have parallel task forces. This needs to be an aligned effort, that’s what this transition is about and that’s why we’re calling for an effective transition process to begin: so that the country can start responding to a health crisis in a unified way.”
“Let me talk a little bit about what the business of protecting the American public is like. If we need to distribute hundreds of millions of doses of vaccines as quickly as possible, the incoming president needs to know the status of each and every one of those. He needs to know the details of the plans for how it’s going to be distributed,” said Protect Our Care Chairman Leslie Dach, a former top HHS official. “You don’t get that from reading the newspapers, you can’t get that in the public domain. If you’re trying to replenish the stockpile – so every doctor, every frontline healthcare worker, every nurse, every essential worker has the protective equipment they need to do their job and go home to their family – you need to know exactly what that supply chain looks like. If you want to use the Defense Production Act, in order to make those materials, you need to know every nook and cranny of how that works: what phone calls have been made, what phone calls need to be made. Every day matters, and every day that the Biden team can’t do that hard work means more suffering for the American people.”