n March 31, three weeks after the World Health Organization designated the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic, a DHL truck rattled up to the gray stone embassy of the United Arab Emirates in Washington, D.C., delivering precious cargo: 1 million Chinese-made diagnostic tests for COVID-19, ordered at the behest of the Trump administration.
Normally, federal government purchases come with detailed contracts, replete with acronyms and identifying codes. They require sign-off from an authorized contract officer and are typically made public in a U.S. government procurement database, under a system intended as a hedge against waste, fraud, and abuse.
This purchase did not appear in any government database. Nor was there any contract officer involved. Instead, it was documented in an invoice obtained by Vanity Fair, from a company, Cogna Technology Solutions (its own name misspelled as “Tecnology” on the bill), which noted a total order of 3.5 million tests for an amount owed of $52 million. The “client name” simply noted “WH.”
Mitch McConnell’s Do Nothing Republicans by Robert Reich
The federal eviction moratorium expired on Friday, expanded unemployment benefits will expire in just six days, and Senate Republicans won't even roll out their relief legislation until tomorrow. While Democrats passed a $3 trillion, comprehensive coronavirus relief package two months ago, Mitch McConnell and his gang of Do-Nothing Republicans have sat on their hands and brought us to the brink of crisis with their inaction. Not lifting a finger to help the American people is typical for them.
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