Julie Su, Joe Biden’s pick for Labor Secretary, can avoid Senate confirmation and keep running the Labor Department. This is due to a September 21 ruling by Edda Emmanuelli Perez, general counsel of the General Accountability Office (GAO).
“As the Deputy Secretary of Labor, Ms. Su may serve as Acting Secretary under section 552 until a successor is appointed,” Emmanuelli Perez ruled. “The Vacancies Act’s time limitations do not apply to her service.”
Su’s past “service” will be of great interest to American workers. For example, as California Labor Commissioner, Su supported Assembly Bill 5, a veritable declaration against workers’ independence. The measure primarily targeted independent truckers and rideshare drivers but there was more to it. AB5 also limited freelance writers, photographers and videographers to 35 submissions per publication, per year. The measure even targeted musicians.
Trumpeter Joe Mazzaferro, leader of a septet, told reporters that AB-5 had already begun reducing his band’s pay, and he also objected on principle. “I feel like it’s our right to work as we choose,” the jazzman explained. That right to choose applies to all workers.
In 2020, Proposition 22 rolled back some of the AB-5’s provisions, but last June Julie Su told the House Committee on Education and Workforce, “I don’t remember how I voted on that.” Su denied that she was involved in drafting AB-5, but later conceded that she had given technical advice on the measure.
Julie Su also headed California’s Labor and Workforce Development Agency (LWDA) which oversees the Employment Development Department (EDD) responsible for unemployment claims. On Su’s watch, the EDD sent more than $31 billion in fraudulent unemployment claims to California, out of state, and even out of the country. In 2020 alone, Su confirmed, fraudsters stole at least $11.4 billion in California unemployment benefits.
On Su’s watch, the state approved more than $140 million for at least 20,000 prisoners. Convicts who made fraudulent claims included convicted murderers Scott Peterson and Cary Stayner. Death row inmates accounted for at least 158 claims landing more than $420,000 in benefits.
Criminals exploited the system, and rapper Nuke Bizzle even posted a video about the ease of ripping off California’s EDD. Scammers filed hundreds of fake claims, including one in the name of California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. While this massive fraud carried on unchecked, legitimate workers waited months to collect the benefits they deserved.
Asked in June if she accepted responsibility for more than $30 billion in unemployment fraud, Su replied, “I think an unemployment insurance system that truly delivers in times of crisis should be the goal of everybody.” That non-answer recalls Saule Omarova, Biden’s nominee for Comptroller of the Currency in the U.S. Treasury Department.
A Moscow State University alum and Soviet apologist, Omarova wanted to change the role of independent banks and have the Federal Reserve control every American’s money. Based on her record, Sen. Tim Scott could think of nobody “more poorly suited” for the comptroller job than Omarova. The same could be said about Julie Su.
The Government “Accountability” Office has ruled that the person most poorly suited for the job, an incompetent administrator and anti-worker ideologue, will head the Labor Department without Senate confirmation. This opens the door for similar end runs in the future. American workers arise. You have everything to lose.
