“Within 48 hours of painstakingly calling leads and potential suppliers,“ the SEIU said in a statement, “the union discovered a distributor who had the 39 million masks, and has since found another supplier who says his company can produce 20 million more masks a week. The union also has found a supplier who can deliver millions of face shields.”

But Adm. Brett Giroir, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, on Thursday defended the administration’s decision to keep the DPA in its back pocket, saying the federal government had poured supplies into New York — providing the state with everything it needs, including masks and ventilators.

“The Defense Production Act, it’s very important that potential is there,” Giroir said on “Fox & Friends.” “But as the president has clearly said, industry is pouring in with offers. Everything we have asked, they have done. And they come every single day to provide more and more goods.”

The pushback also comes as more than 100 current and former national security professionals, including former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, joined the call for action this week, urging the president to use the act to ramp up production of critical medical supplies.

The letter, obtained by The Wall Street Journal, says that despite the administration’s using the DPA on a “narrow and limited basis,” health care workers continue to “sound the alarm, citing the increasingly urgent and dire need for ventilators, masks, testing supplies and other resources.”

“Some private companies have been willing and able to scale up production — and admirably so,” the letter says. “But as governors and local leaders around the country are making clear, private efforts without more extensive government support are proving far from sufficient to meet the current and anticipated needs. Beyond questions of supply, the private sector lacks the ability to process incoming requests, prioritize the most urgent needs, and coordinate with other companies absent more concerted government involvement. That is precisely what the DPA is designed to do.”

Though President Donald Trump signed an executive order last week to invoke the DPA, he has yet to make a single order, saying that “we have the act to use in case we need it, but we have so many things being made right now” by companies that are volunteering. During Monday’s White House briefing, the president offered another reason for not activating the DPA, suggesting that doing so would be socialist.

“We’re a country not based on nationalizing our business,” Trump said. “Call a person over in Venezuela. Ask them, how did nationalization of their businesses work out? Not too well.”

Trump addressed the subject during Thursday‘s White House briefing, reiterating that “companies want to do this.“ But the president added that he‘d used the DPA on “two minor occasions,“ though he didn‘t provide any specifics or evidence to support the statement.

“I talk about the Defense Production Act a lot. I've enacted it. I have it. I can do it with a pen,“ Trump told reporters. “We have actually used it on two minor occasions, and then we could withdraw it. But for the most part, the companies, we don’t need it. We say we need this, and they say don‘t bother, we‘re going to do it.“

Trump added: “Frankly, they don‘t need somebody to walk over there with a hammer and say, do it. They are getting it done.“