Obama administration repeatedly sought to cut PPE stockpile, but Biden team points to GOP-led 'budget squeeze'

The Obama administration sought several cuts in funding for the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) of personal protective equipment (PPE) and other critical medical supplies -- although some of the reductions were relatively small, and most came after Republicans implemented a new law to restrict federal discretionary spending, records reviewed by Fox News show.

Former Vice President Joe Biden's campaign has recently stepped up its attacks on President Trump's pandemic preparedness, drawing what could be one of the most consequential battle lines of the presidential race amid the coronavirus crisis. A widely cited USA Today fact-check, which found that the Obama administration had allowed the N95 mask stockpile to deplete, has become a flashpoint in that increasingly murky and numbers-heavy debate.

In its fiscal 2011 budget, submitted in early 2010, the Obama administration explicitly sought a reduction in the SNS: "CDC requests $523,533,000 for the Strategic National Stockpile in FY 2011, a decrease of $72,216,000 below the FY 2010 Omnibus," the budget request reads.

The document went on to make clear that $68,515,000 would separately be transferred to the SNS from the fiscal 2009 appropriation for an H1N1-related fund, meaning that overall, the strategic stockpile would receive $592,048,000 -- a reduction of only a few million dollars from the previous year.

A top Biden adviser told Fox News on Thursday that the fiscal 2011 budget was "almost identical" to the previous year's budget, and pointed out that the 2011 cuts constituted a reduction of less than 1 percentage point.