WASHINGTON — President Biden said Tuesday he’ll nominate deputy labor secretary Julie Su to interchange Marty Walsh as labor secretary — despite Su overseeing billions of dollars in fraudulent handouts when she held the identical post in California.
Su, 54, was the Golden State’s labor secretary from January 2019 to July 2021 and took heat for her agency’s sluggish distribution of COVID-19 unemployment advantages. Based on a nonpartisan report from August, payments to roughly 5 million California employees were delayed through the pandemic — while around 1 million more had their advantages wrongly denied.
But that looked like a minor hiccup after Su admitted in early 2021 that California’s Employment Development Department could have paid out as much as $31.4 billion in unemployment funds to fraudsters. Newer estimates have put that quantity as high as $40 billion.
“There is no such thing as a sugarcoating the fact,” Su said on the time. “California didn’t have sufficient security measures in place to forestall this level of fraud.”
White House deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton defended Su’s performance in California during a Tuesday gaggle on Air Force One — previewing what could develop into a contentious subject at her Senate confirmation hearings.
“When the pandemic hit, red and blue states were coping with fragile, outdated technology,” Dalton told reporters en path to a speech by President Biden in Virginia Beach, Va. “And under Julie’s leadership, California took essential steps to process a historic variety of claims — one in five in your complete nation.
“Julie believes safety nets have to be strengthened and through her time at DOL she has worked with states to set a giant table national approach to those issues because they’re a national problem,” Dalton went on. “And I’ll add that since taking office President Biden has prioritized combating potential fraud [in] relief funds, just as he did aggressively and successfully as vp.”
The Democrat-run California state government has tried to deflect blame by describing unemployment profit fraud as a “national problem,” but critics resembling Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) have hammered Su’s performance — with Kiley describing her as “failing up” into federal positions.
“While hardworking California residents couldn’t get their advantages, she let $30 billion exit the door in fraudulent payments to criminals – the biggest fraud of taxpayer dollars in history,” Kiley wrote in a recent blog post.
Seven California House Republicans, led by Kiley, wrote Biden a letter this month urging him not to choose her. Signers included Reps. Tom McClintock, Jay Obernolte, Young Kim, Ken Calvert, Darrell Issa and Mike Garcia.
On the opposite side of the aisle, Biden had faced pressure from congressional Democrats to choose Su after initial blowback for choosing Walsh, then the mayor of Boston, to be labor secretary on the outset of his administration. With the selection of Walsh, Biden became the primary president without an Asian cabinet member since George H.W. Bush.
The Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus demanded earlier this month that Biden pick Su to interchange Walsh, who resigned to develop into executive director of the National Hockey League Players’ Association, effective next month.
“[T]he inclusion of an AANHPI as a Cabinet Secretary is long overdue,” the caucus said, using an acronym for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders.
Democrats currently control the Senate with a 51-49 majority, meaning Su is unlikely to be blocked unless opposition forms amongst members of her own party.
Two months after Biden took office — and one month after he tapped Su to be Walsh’s deputy — Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-In poor health.) threatened to dam confirmation of presidential nominees in protest of West Wing aide Jen O’Malley Dillon making an “incredibly insulting” remark brushing off concern about an absence of outstanding Asian picks.
Dillon allegedly said Biden’s critics needs to be satisfied with Vice President Kamala Harris, who was born to an Indian mother and a Jamaican father.
“To be told that, ‘Well, you have got Kamala Harris, we’re very happy with her, you don’t need anybody else’ is insulting… that was the trigger for me,” Duckworth said on the time.
“But multiple times I’ve heard that. And that’s not something you’ll say to the black caucus, ‘Well, you have got Kamala, we’re not going to place any more African-Americans in the cupboard because you have got Kamala.’”
Duckworth said that “once I asked about AAPI representation … the primary words out of the staff’s mouth was ‘Well, we’re very happy with Vice President Harris’, which is incredibly insulting.”
A fellow Asian-American Democrat, Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, backed up Duckworth’s initiative.
Duckworth later backed down when the White House agreed to appoint an in-house Asian-American liaison officer, Erika Moritsugu, to function a deputy assistant to Biden.
Two Asian Americans, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai and presidential science adviser Arati Prabhakar, hold cabinet-level positions but usually are not Senate confirmed.
Su was born within the US to oldsters from China and graduated from Stanford and Harvard Law School. She can be the primary Asian-American, Senate-confirmed cabinet member because the resignation of Elaine Chao as transportation secretary in January 2021.
Norman Mineta became the primary cabinet secretary of East Asian descent in 2000, serving under President Bill Clinton as commerce secretary and continuing under President George W. Bush as transportation secretary until July 2006.
Chao was labor secretary throughout Bush’s eight years in office and was followed by three Asian-American Cabinet secretaries under President Barack Obama — Energy Secretary Steven Chu (2009-2013); Veterans Affairs Secretary Erik Shinseki, who resigned in 2014 amid the VA hospital negligence scandal; and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke.
