Mitt Romney pummels $28 million House bill to help the FDA fix the baby formula shortage

• Romney assailed a House bill designed to help fix the baby formula shortage.
• "We need to get the formula, not more money for FDA inspectors," he told Insider.

Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah on Tuesday swung at a $28 million House bill meant to boost funding for the Food and Drug Administration to ease the baby formula shortage.

"If it were actually buying infant formula, I might be inclined to support it," Romney told Insider. "But it's paying more money for FDA people, which is not what we need. We need to get the formula, not more money for FDA inspectors."

The House voted last week to provide extra funding to the FDA to address the ongoing baby formula shortage. Only 12 Republicans joined 219 Democrats to support the bill, The Washington Post reported.

The measure faces an uncertain future in the Senate, where legislation must attract the backing of ten GOP senators to reach Biden's desk. Republicans have stepped up their attacks on the Biden administration lately, pummeling Democrats for not doing more to get ahead of the formula shortage.

"The baby formula shortages hurting American families are outrageous and unacceptable," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said in a statement earlier this month. "This problem has been developing in slow motion for several months now, but the Biden Administration has been characteristically sluggish and halting in response."

The baby formula shortage worsened in February once Abbott Nutrition shut down a Michigan plant that was connected to four infants who became hospitalized with a rare bacterial illness. Four companies, including Abbott, control the vast majority of domestic formula production.

Abbott has said that even if the FDA reauthorized the opening of the Michigan plant, it would still take several more months for formula products to reach store shelves.

The Biden administration has stepped in to try and ease the shortage, cutting red tape and reducing some regulations to get products onto shelves faster. It has also authorized a new initiative known as Operation Fly Formula aimed at importing formula from overseas at a quick pace. The first shipment arrived to Indiana from Germany over the weekend.