President Joe Biden is pictured at the COP26 U.N. Climate Summit, Nov. 2, 2021, in Glasgow, Scotland. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Critics have slammed President Joe Biden, accusing him of pivoting and shirking accountability after he said on Monday that he is letting states lead the way on testing for the omicron variant of covid-19 spreading like wildfire across the U.S.
Biden was in a conference call with some U.S. governors when Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) expressed concerns that federal plans to buy and distribute 500,000 at-home tests might interfere with state-led efforts to buy and distribute tests, CNBC reported.
“There is no federal solution, this gets solved at a state level,” Biden told Hutchinson.
The Biden administration has infuriated many on the right for trying to impose vaccine mandates, including for private businesses with more than 100 employees. The White House website promotes his “six-pronged, comprehensive national strategy” entitled “Path out of the Pandemic.“
Some critics have called out Biden and his chief medical advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, for not doing more to warn about the omicron variant. Vanity Fair reported on Dec. 23 that the Biden administration in October rejected a plan by experts to ramp up testing ahead of the holidays.
Others compared Biden to former President Donald Trump, who was lambasted in April 2020 when covid-19 was shutting down the U.S. During a discussion on testing, Trump said, “it’s going to be up to the states.”
Republicans criticized Biden for reneging on his promise to bring the country out of the pandemic. He seemed to take a drastically different position than he once had, Fox News reported.
“Joe Biden claimed he would shut down the virus. Now a year later when he failed to do so, he says there is no federal solution to COVID. Joe Biden is a hypocrite,” the GOP said from its official Twitter account.
Biden’s claim of no federal solution “is … not what he campaigned on. At all” tweeted former Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh.
The largest employer in the U.S., the federal government had more than 9 million employees as of 2019 — almost 6 percent of the total U.S. workforce of 156.92 million, Brookings reported. Of those federal workers, 85 percent work outside Washington, D.C. in institutions and offices around the U.S.
Agencies run by the federal government include federal aviation, the National Guard, Army resources, and testing resources. All are capable of coordinating cohesive policies with states to warn and send out proper messaging to the public on risks.
Photo: President Joe Biden speaks during an event about the “Global Methane Pledge” at the COP26 U.N. Climate Summit, Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021, in Glasgow, Scotland. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
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