Anonymous ID: abc8fa Jan. 13, 2023, 2:54 p.m. No.18139169   🗄️.is đź”—kun   >>9317

>>18139125

 

Why Xavier Becerra Can’t Be Fired

The HHS secretary is out of his depth, but everyone knew that when he was appointed.

 

The White House is apparently experiencing buyer’s remorse over its appointment of Xavier Becerra to run the Health and Human Services Department. This is the cost of indulging identity politics in a pandemic.

 

According to a cast of anonymous dozens in a Washington Post story, the Biden Administration is “frustrated” with Mr. Becerra’s failure to “coordinat[e] the nation’s vast health bureaucracy” to handle the virus, allowing “confusing and sometimes conflicting messages.” The HHS chief is accused of being in over his head and, according to one unnamed senior Administration official, “taking too passive a role” in virus management.

 

This comes as no surprise to anyone who has observed Mr. Becerra over the years. We wonder what the White House expected in naming a progressive lawyer, with no healthcare experience, to run a sprawling $1.5 trillion agency charged with overseeing Mr. Biden’s campaign promise to “shut down the virus.”

 

Mr. Becerra was a California Congressman for 24 years until then Gov. Jerry Brown tapped him in 2016 to replace Kamala Harris as California’s Attorney General. Mr. Becerra’s tenure was notable mainly for filing some 100 lawsuits against the Trump Administration, and endorsing Medicare for All. President Biden had many more capable candidates for HHS, but he caved to woke pressure to appoint a progressive Hispanic.

 

The damage has been real and goes far beyond the White House gripe about “messaging.” The Administration is rightly under fire for being unprepared for Covid’s Omicron surge, and Mr. Becerra’s agency is at the center of a testing and treatment shortage that has resulted in preventable deaths. One upside of his fumbling is that HHS hasn’t roiled health-insurance and drug markets with a regulatory onslaught, but no doubt that will change.

 

Even as Administration leakers trash Mr. Becerra, there’s no sign Mr. Biden plans to sack him. Why not? It would “draw the ire of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and other grass-roots groups that pressed Biden to appoint more Latinos to his Cabinet,” writes the Post. The problem with putting identity above qualifications is that you can’t get rid of an appointee even if he proves to be incompetent.

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-xavier-becerra-cant-be-fired-health-and-human-services-biden-administration-11643752812