A last-minute push to confirm Su ignores her latest mistakes

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** Julie Su Again and Again
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Dear John,

History repeats itself, Karl Marx wrote, “First as tragedy, then as farce.” But he didn’t say what happens the third time, when tragic farce strikes again and the whole benighted process repeats itself.

Take the case of Julie Su, President Joe Biden’s acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor. In the past four years, Su has, inadvertently perhaps but through her own fecklessness, aided hostile foreign actors, abused her federal authority to cover it up, and made innocent California employers pay for it. If that isn’t tragic enough, Su is now in the midst of yet another crisis.

An independent investigation now shows that a staffer in one of Su’s agencies shared with select investors what the New York Times called ([link removed]) “potentially market-moving employment data.” In February, another Labor Department employee inappropriately disclosed key information to so-called super users; in May, the department posted critical inflation reporting “half an hour before its scheduled release.”

“Outdated technology, inadequate funding and a failure to follow established procedures contributed to embarrassing missteps” at Su’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Times reported on December 10.

And yet Su remains at her post, the longest-serving unconfirmed cabinet secretary in U.S. history. By January 20, she will have run DOL for a remarkable 681 days without Senate confirmation.

It no longer matters whether you’ve lost track — if you’re no longer sure whether this is the comic or tragic bit in the nation’s story. It’s sufficient to know that incompetence now follows danger with still more incompetence and greater danger at high speed like a China Syndrome nuclear meltdown.

So, it may be funny to you — or terrifying, or both — that we now discover that, as other Biden staffers look for new jobs, there’s a move in the Senate to finally confirm Julie Su.

How did we get here?

In 2020, scanning the republic in search of White House staff, president-elect Biden recruited ([link removed]) Su, then California’s secretary of labor, for the No. 2 job at the U.S. Department of Labor. It was an odd choice. In Sacramento, Su was best known for scandal. For years, she ignored formal warnings that the state unemployment insurance system she oversaw was vulnerable to hackers. The state auditor recommended tougher ID verification standards; Su resisted, arguing that following the auditor’s advice would disproportionately hurt black and brown Californians.

Her ideological sensitivities left the system exposed. When Covid hit and millions of suddenly idled California workers applied for unemployment benefits, Su lost some $32 billion to international criminal gangs aligned with foreign enemies — particularly China and Russia. The losses included a $20 billion Covid-era loan from the federal government that was meant to backstop the Covid losses.

Biden airlifted Su out of that mess. In Washington, D.C., Marty Walsh, Su’s boss at Labor, departed for the NHL Players Association. In early 2023, Biden nominated Su to replace him. She used her new federal power in a failed attempt ([link removed]) to hide California’s losses. At the same time, back home, Governor Gavin Newsom’s refusal to repay the federal loan triggered an automatic hike in the rate that California employers pay in federal withholding taxes. That tax hike will ratchet upward annually until the entire debt is paid; in July, a state auditor told ([link removed]) National Review that, given California’s chaotic economy, his agency can no longer say when California employers will be able to pay off the federal debt.

When Senate and House panels demanded ([link removed]) information about all this, Su responded with blather.

“My requests for information have been met with silence or evasive non-answers,” said Representative Michelle Steel (R., Calif.). “Julie Su refuses to release vital information to the public or Congress about this taxpayer abuse.”

Su also imposed foot-shot California labor policies on the rest of the nation. She used her federal power to rewrite DOL rules to limit independent contracting. She boosted the PRO Act, an attempt to root those Labor Department rules in federal law.

She has been loud and proud about her war on American businesses. Speaking on behalf of Kamala Harris in a Philadelphia union hall, she declared that “enforcement” of business regulations is “the key” to achieving the Left’s goals.

“Believe me,” she said, “you can’t achieve empowerment and equity without enforcement."

"I like to say we’re in a golden age of enforcement,” Su said.

Multiple congressional sources tell National Review that Su is unlikely to escape congressional proctologists even after she leaves the Labor Department.

“Julie is trying to run the clock out,” said one. “But she’s going to discover that this clock doesn’t run out.”

Despite these classics in the Julie Su tragicomic career, outgoing senator Joe Manchin (I., W.Va.) now says he’s ready to drop his resistance to Su’s confirmation.

“We had differences,” Manchin told ([link removed]) Axios. “I couldn’t vote for her because of the differences, but I would do nothing that would harm her, and her further endeavors in life.”

Like the presidential pardon, Senate confirmation is apparently a power best deployed as a personal gift from one insider to another.

— By CPC president Will Swaim. A version of this commentary was originally published by National Review. ([link removed])

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** Radio Free California #370: Civil Fights
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On this week's podcast with CPC president Will Swaim and CPC board member David Bahnsen: Trump taps California attorney Harmeet Dhillon to reform the federal Civil Rights Division. A French Laundry alum falls victim to Gavin Newsom’s civil rights regime. Celebrating 80 years of John Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row.” Listen now. ([link removed])

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