{"id":1589608,"date":"2022-08-04T17:19:41","date_gmt":"2022-08-04T21:19:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1589608"},"modified":"2022-08-04T17:19:51","modified_gmt":"2022-08-04T21:19:51","slug":"affirmative-inaction-why-joe-biden-still-hasnt-fired-asleep-at-the-wheel-health-secretary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/affirmative-inaction-why-joe-biden-still-hasnt-fired-asleep-at-the-wheel-health-secretary\/","title":{"rendered":"Affirmative Inaction: Why Joe Biden Still Hasn\u2019t Fired \u2018Asleep at the Wheel\u2019 Health Secretary"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">28<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Faffirmative-inaction-why-joe-biden-still-hasnt-fired-asleep-at-the-wheel-health-secretary%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1589608&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p>President Joe Biden still hasn&#8217;t fired Xavier Becerra, the unqualified health and human services secretary whose failed leadership has exacerbated the administration&#8217;s botched response to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the ongoing <a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/media\/new-media-rule-dont-say-gay\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">monkeypox outbreak<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Alas, Becerra probably won&#8217;t be fired for the same reason he was hired. Because of his race and the so-called diversity he brings to the administration.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-3 text-red font-serif text-xl md:text-4xl\"><a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/biden-administration\/white-house-afraid-to-replace-hhs-secretary-because-hes-hispanic\/\"><strong>READ MORE: White House Afraid To Replace HHS Secretary Because He\u2019s Hispanic<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The White House has been fed up with Becerra&#8217;s job performance\u00a0for months and has &#8220;openly mused&#8221; about replacing him, according to a <em>Washington Post<\/em> report published in January. Health experts inside and outside the administration complained about his &#8220;low profile&#8221; and &#8220;passive&#8221; approach to complex problems. &#8220;He hasn&#8217;t shown up,&#8221; one COVID-19 analyst told the <em>Post<\/em>. &#8220;[He&#8217;s been] like a ghost.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, administration officials were &#8220;loath&#8221; to give Becerra the axe because doing so &#8220;would likely draw the ire of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and other grass-roots groups that pressed Biden to appoint more Latinos to his Cabinet.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>New York Times<\/em> reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns recounted this racially charged pressure campaign in their recently published book, <a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/politics\/the-old-man-and-the-aoc\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>This Will Not Pass<\/em><\/a>. Biden&#8217;s search for a health secretary, they wrote, was a &#8220;fraught&#8221; process characterized by\u00a0&#8220;hurt feelings and [racial] grievance.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>While attempting to assemble &#8220;the most diverse cabinet in history,&#8221;\u00a0Biden&#8217;s team &#8220;panicked&#8221; in response to criticism from Hispanic lawmakers who wanted more Hispanics nominated for cabinet-level positions. They\u00a0&#8220;scrambled&#8221; to offer Becerra the job\u2014a &#8220;hasty choice&#8221; explicitly intended to &#8220;calm the situation.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So much for Biden&#8217;s campaign pledge to &#8220;follow the science&#8221; and &#8220;shut down&#8221; COVID-19 by putting the experts back in charge of the government&#8217;s pandemic response. Becerra, a former congressman, was woefully unqualified for the position of health secretary. His most relevant experience involved a lawsuit he filed as California attorney general to force the Little Sisters of the Poor to provide birth control to employees. More than 620,000 Americans <a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/coronavirus\/biden-covid-death-tracker\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">have died<\/a> from COVID-19 on his watch.<\/p>\n<p>Some Democrats complained about the &#8220;harried selection process&#8221; and viewed Becerra as a &#8220;baffling&#8221; nominee. They were ignored. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) was especially annoyed because she &#8220;had worked closely with Becerra in the House and viewed him as untrustworthy.&#8221; Meanwhile, Biden chief of staff Ron Klain grew &#8220;weary&#8221; of the Democratic coalition&#8217;s insistence on\u00a0&#8220;treating the cabinet as an identity-politics Rubik&#8217;s Cube.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Becerra&#8217;s inability to helm the nation&#8217;s health department was glaringly obvious in January, when the <em>Post<\/em> reported on White House &#8220;frustrations&#8221; with his leadership. In recent months, the federal government&#8217;s response to monkeypox has further vindicated Becerra&#8217;s critics who contend the health secretary has absolutely no idea what he&#8217;s doing.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>New York Times<\/em> on Wednesday published a damning <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/08\/03\/us\/politics\/monkeypox-vaccine-doses-us.html?referringSource=articleShare\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">report<\/a> on Becerra&#8217;s botched handling of the monkeypox outbreak, which has been hobbled by a vaccine shortage &#8220;caused in\u00a0part&#8221; by his department&#8217;s failure &#8220;to ask that bulk stocks of the vaccine it already owned be bottled for distribution.&#8221; The release of the vaccine doses was also delayed because\u00a0the Food and Drug Administration, under Becerra&#8217;s purview, took months to inspect and approve the Danish factory producing the vaccine.<\/p>\n<p>Lawrence Gostin, a renowned public health expert from Georgetown Law who has consulted with the White House on monkeypox, said the government&#8217;s response to the outbreak has been &#8220;deeply frustrating.&#8221; Federal health agencies have been &#8220;kind of asleep at the wheel on this,&#8221; and continue to struggle with &#8220;the same kinds of bureaucratic delays and forgetfulness and dropping the ball that we did during the COVID pandemic,&#8221; he told the <em>Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The article includes a familiar critique of Becerra&#8217;s leadership. Detractors fault his &#8220;hands-off approach to an increasingly serious situation,&#8221; but weren&#8217;t willing to speak on the record.\u00a0Biden is reportedly &#8220;upset&#8221; by the vaccine shortage and &#8220;stung by criticism that a lack of foresight and management has left gay men\u2014the prime risk group for monkeypox\u2014unprotected.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Josh Barro, a pro-Biden journalist, <a href=\"https:\/\/mobile.twitter.com\/jbarro\/status\/1554960885399044096\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">observed<\/a> that the <em>Times<\/em> article &#8220;really makes Xavier Becerra sound incompetent and out to lunch. How did he get the HHS Secretary job anyway? He doesn&#8217;t have relevant qualifications.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Joe Biden still hasn&#8217;t fired Xavier Becerra, the unqualified health and human services secretary whose failed leadership has exacerbated the administration&#8217;s botched response to the COVID-19 pandemic as well<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":97,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1589608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1589608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/97"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1589608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1589608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1589608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1589608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1589608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}