Julie Su, best known for EDD scandal, failing up
Have you ever noticed that an outsized number of the flops in the Biden administration come from California?
From Vice President Kamala Harris, to Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, to wannabe ambassador to India Eric Garcetti ... California is becoming the Island of Misfit Appointees. Why is that so?
Well, in a one-party state, nobody gets punished for complete and utter incompetence. In fact, as long as you don’t offend the machine, failure will always rise to the top.
Inexplicably, it looks like we could be adding another name to the list of Golden State gaffe machines. This time it’s former California Secretary of Labor Julie Su.
President Biden’s first secretary of labor, Marty Walsh, is resigning to take a job with the NHL Players Union. And the candidate whom Biden is widely believed to favor as the presumptive nominee to replace him? Julie Su, Gavin Newsom’s hand-picked disaster of a labor secretary, here in California.
Pro-tip: “Gavin Newsom’s labor secretary” looks about as good on a résumé as “Passenger safety director, the Titanic.”
But, I digress.
Let’s go ahead and review some of Su’s greatest hits, shall we?
After Newsom shut the state down during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, in order to “flatten the curve,” Su oversaw the the Employment Development Department, the nation’s most broken, bumbling unemployment office, by far. On her watch, 5 million Californians had benefits delayed and 1 million had benefits improperly denied.
This meant that due to government negligence, Californians who were prohibited by emergency order from going to work, couldn’t pay their rent, health insurance premiums or grocery bills at the same time the globe was melting down.
Simultaneously, Su transferred somewhere between $30 and $40 billion in state money to undeserving criminals.
Rocklin Republican Congressman Kevin Kiley described this fleecing as “the largest fraud of taxpayer dollars in history.”
Su really has no acceptable explanation for her failures, either.
According to reporting from the Los Angeles Times, in one Facebook Live chat, unemployed Californians peppered her with 1,500 questions and messages, many of them showing frustration.
Related: Californians should be furious over unemployment fraud scandal.
“I acknowledge that problem. I own it,” Su said during the session. “I want you to hear from me directly that that is not acceptable and we are going to fix it.”
She also went on to acknowledge that the EDD was unprepared for the unprecedented demand for unemployment assistance after millions were put out of work during the pandemic.
No kidding.
Here’s the kicker: everyone under the sun, with the exception of the Biden administration, seems to understand this, too.
State Auditor Elaine Howle said poor planning and ineffective management left California’s unemployment agency unprepared to help jobless Californians, adding that “EDD’s inefficient processes and lack of advanced planning led to significant delays” in payments of unemployment claims.
Even California Democrats seem to get it.
Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris, D-Laguna Beach, who is chairwoman of the Assembly Accountability and Administrative Review Committee, told the Times, “She has done a tremendous job on many different initiatives, but she has not done a good job at running the Employment Development Department and, as a result, has wasted billions of dollars and, more importantly, caused heartache for millions of Californians.”
But now it looks like President Biden could elevate Su to the national stage.
After hearing that Su blew $40 billion in fraudulent claims, someone at the Biden White
House must have said, “Hey, she sounds like one of us!”
I wonder what other jobs they considered her for besides secretary of labor? The FEMA rapid response unit?
In what other profession can you be a complete disaster on a local level, then get promoted to doing that same job on a national level?
I mean, other than in talk radio?
OK, OK, and also from being mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
Let’s face it, putting Su in charge of our Labor Department makes about as much sense as putting Joe Biden in charge of our borders.
I guess it will soon be up to the United States Senate to throw the brakes on this impending calamity — and prevent another California problem child from causing mischief in Washington, D.C.
— not to mention more headaches for Americans who are just trying to get by.