A recent Politico piece details how Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra has been mostly absent from the Biden administration’s COVID-19 response. This isn’t surprising to anyone who has paid attention to his career.
The piece by reporter Adam Cancryn notes that Becerra was not included in a call by Biden’s senior health officials that began Biden’s plan to push booster shots. “Becerra has steered clear of internal policy debates that have raged between HHS’ public health agencies, according to interviews with a dozen current and former administration officials and others familiar with the situation,” Cancryn reports.
The piece also notes that Becerra has not taken part in any COVID-19 briefings yet but “has spent nearly every other week away from Washington, stumping for Biden’s agenda around the country and promoting the Covid-19 response in local communities.”
This is not exactly a surprise. Becerra has no background in medicine or public health. He is a lawyer who served as a member of Congress, a California state legislator, and California’s attorney general. He was always going to be a political actor, not a health-focused official. And that is why he should have been voted down.
Becerra’s political record was abysmal. He’s a culture warrior who has no regard for religious freedom and who overstepped his bounds as attorney general to force pro-life and religious organizations to promote and pay for abortions. He had no health background to hide behind, and the administration clearly did not nominate him to be a major player in the COVID-19 response. He was nominated for his political background, which was toxic. Self-professed pro-life Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania should have voted against his confirmation.
While others handle COVID-19, Becerra has been busy doing exactly what he was hired to do. He’s focused on opposing Texas’s recent abortion law and building on Obamacare, the law that Becerra used to fight in court against the Little Sisters of the Poor. His record and lack of experience in public health always made him unqualified. That the Biden administration won’t even pretend to give him a major role in the COVID-19 response is proof of that.
