Fact check: Biden falsely says he was first to call for invoking Defense Production Act
During an event to discuss school reopening amid the coronavirus pandemic, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden repeated a talking point he's used previously -- that he was ahead of the curve in calling for the Defense Production Act to be used to boost manufacturing of high-demand health products, such as protective equipment.
Posted — UpdatedDuring an event to discuss school reopening amid the coronavirus pandemic, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden repeated a talking point he’s used previously — that he was ahead of the curve in calling for the Defense Production Act to be used to boost manufacturing of high-demand health products, such as protective equipment.
In a question-and-answer session with reporters following his Sept. 2 event in Wilmington, Del., Biden said, "When it got up to March, I kept saying, look, you’ve got to invoke, and you remember, I think I was the first — I may be mistaken — person calling about the Defense Production Act. … Use that authority. Use it to go out there now and don’t wait to talk about the need for us to have masks."
Let’s take a fresh look.
What is the Defense Production Act?
The Defense Production Act was signed by President Harry Truman in 1950 and amended periodically since then. Broadly, it allows the federal government to take a stronger role in directing domestic manufacturing capabilities during a national emergency, according to the Congressional Research Service.
These powers allow the government to tell private businesses when and how to fulfill orders for essential goods. Over the years, its scope has been expanded from military needs to natural hazards, terrorist attacks, and other national emergencies.
"The DPA is one of those seemingly obscure laws that is actually extraordinarily significant," Margaret O’Mara, a University of Washington historian who studies the connections between government and industry, told us in March.
A look at the timeline
The earliest discussion of using the Defense Production Act to combat the coronavirus came on Feb. 26, just three weeks after the first coronavirus death in the United States. Here’s a rundown:
Later that day, Trump indicated a certain reluctance in a tweet. "I only signed the Defense Production Act to combat the Chinese Virus should we need to invoke it in a worst case scenario in the future. Hopefully there will be no need, but we are all in this TOGETHER!"
Biden’s campaign did not respond to an inquiry seeking earlier comments by the candidate about the Defense Production Act.
Trump has not used the act "to create a permanent, sustainable, redundant, domestic supply chain for all things pandemic: testing, swabs, N95 masks, etc.," Jamie Baker, a former legal adviser to the National Security Council and a professor of national security law at Syracuse University, told the Times.
Still, even if Biden agrees that Trump’s follow-through has been weak, it doesn’t mean that he was the first official to call for the Defense Production Act to be used.
PolitiFact ruling
Biden has said several times he was the first person calling for use of the Defense Production Act.
But Biden was far from the first. A full 18 days before Biden made his first public comment on the act, Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary had publicly floated the idea, and Trump made it official the same day Biden made his remarks. In between, dozens of Democratic lawmakers publicly called for the act to be used, and Biden did not mention it in a Democratic primary debate.
We rate the statement False.
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