Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack Led the Biden Administration’s Supply Chain Task Force. He Never Attended A Meeting.

Task Force was a “cynical attempt at signaling engagement” while doing “little or nothing,” U.S. Secretary for Agriculture Tom Vilsack said. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty images)

President Joe Biden appointed Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture, to chair a team that was charged with solving a supply chain crisis that caused grocery shelves to be empty. Records show that the secretary did not even attend a meeting.

In June 2021, as supply chains were being crippled by the effects of pandemic-era restrictions and Biden’s rampant spending, Vilsack pledged Biden announced that they would invite you to join the newly formed Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force. solve The budding crisis can be solved by a whole-of government approach.

However, those meetings were never held. There are no records showing that Vilsack or his designees participated in any meetings with the task force after its launch, according to the Department of Agriculture’s response to a Freedom of Information Act request Submitted by the Functional Government Institute.

Instead, Vilsack focused His efforts to accuse the meat industry of using pandemic to make unfair profits. And he wasn’t the only absentee member of the supply chain initiative. The Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg was another co-chair of the task force. He quietly took paternity leave in august 2021. It was two months before anyone heard from him. noticed Buttigieg’s absence.

The Department of Agriculture produced just 19 pages of records responsive to the Functional Government Initiative’s request, which asked for all of Vilsack’s memos, meeting minutes, calendar entries, and calendar invitations for task force meetings from the date of its creation through July 28, 2022. The records included 14 pages of statements from the White House and the department. The remaining five pages were briefing materials for the task force’s launch event where Vilsack pledged to participate in the initiative.

According to Functional Government Initiative spokesman Peter McGinnis, Vilsack’s task force “might be more aptly called a ‘hole in government’ approach.”

“Secretary Vilsack’s failure to convene a single meeting with his fellow leaders, while dedicating federal resources to investigate and blame the private sector, shows that the Task Force was little more than a cynical attempt to signal engagement on supply chain disruptions while, in fact, doing little or nothing,” McGinnis said.

The United States continues to struggle with supply chain problems in the food industry. lingering effects These factors have led to egg prices rising.