OPINION:
Xavier Becerra was not “hired” to be the head of the Health and Human Services Department for his medical knowledge. He couldn’t be; he has no medical background.
Rather, he was brought to that position to be the federal government’s pit bull for COVID-19 policy.
He’s a former member of the House Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus — meaning, a socialist in all but name. He’s an advocate of the Bernie Sanders/Alexandria Ocasio Cortez-style of top-down, taxpayer-funded government-run health care. And he’s now going to use his HHS slot to shove into play every leftist agenda that can be tied, no matter how thinly, to health care, medical care and the safety and welfare of the public — beginning with the coronavirus and the need to return to normalcy.
Be on guard, America. This guy is to Joe Biden what Eric Holder was to Barack Obama — a “wingman” who knows how to circumvent constitutional limits and congressional authorities and how to use the courts to advance activist causes. In fact, there’s a sort of symbiotic relationship between Becerra and Holder that makes the whole “wingman” analogy all the more pertinent.
In 2013, Holder, then-head of the U.S. Justice Department; then-considered by conservatives as one of the most politically motivated U.S. attorney generals of all time, as little more than a partisan hack for progressive-socialist causes, really; then-held in contempt by the House of Representatives — in 2013, Holder tossed aside a question about his talked-about departure from the federal position and said, “I’m still the president’s wingman” and “I’m [still] there with my boy.”
Meaning Obama.
Meaning he was still set on carrying out leftist visions for police reform and justice reform and civil rights reform, the stuff and kind of which are now carried out by the Black Lives Matter types and Antifa crowd and defund the police movement.
But in 2014, Holder announced his resignation from the DOJ. He back to work in a private law firm. Then he was hired by California’s Democrats to fight, fight, fight against the Republican-controlled Congress and the just-elected President Donald Trump.
“It’s going to be California versus Donald Trump,” said one political science professor at the University of Southern California, to CNBC in January of 2017. “[Holder will] be the onsite opposition to Trump and his policies.
And then CNBC wrote this: “Holder was formally retained by the California legislature and is likely to work closely with Rep. Xavier Becerra, who is set to become the next state attorney general after confirmation.”
Becerra was sworn in as the 33rd attorney general for California on January 24, 2017. And thus, their partnership did indeed begin. It wasn’t exactly a transparent one. Or constitutional.
From California Republican Assemblyman Kevin Kiley’s May 2017, Facebook post: “After the Legislature hired Eric Holder and his law firm for $25,000 per month, I asked the California Attorney General’s Office for a legal opinion as to whether this Contract violated our State Constitution. Four and a half months later … I have yet to receive a response.”
Instead, the contract was extended another month, Kiley wrote.
So Kiley then wrote directly to Becerra, asking for clarification and reminding him of his “legal obligation” to clarify.
“We’ve learned a few things in the months since my initial request,” Kiley wrote. Like what? Like this: “[M]ost of the work Mr. Holder is doing remains a mystery,” Kiley said.
Like this: “[D]espite the fact that the Legislature as a whole is Mr. Holder’s client, he has refused to meet with any Republican legislators,” Kiley wrote.
And like this: “Mr. Becerra [opened] his own office in Washington D.C. near Mr. Holder’s office,” Kiley wrote.
The buddy system works best, it seems.
And this is what Becerra is bringing to the position of HHS director, the leading force of government health policy, the leading figure on Biden’s COVID-19 plans. A “do-what-I-will, Constitution be danged” form of governance.
Make way for more masking, more contact tracing — I.e., government surveillance of citizens — more mandates on interstate travel, more pressures and pushes and public relation campaigns for vaccine passports, more regulatory controls on businesses, more demands for funding for schools, more intrusive overreaches on citizens’ rights to determine their own health futures and make their own medical decisions. More scares and frights and warnings of deaths and disasters from variant coronaviruses. More clamps on churches. More stay-at-home orders. More declarations of national health emergencies — leading to more cycles of the same federal crackdowns on individual rights. More pitting of states against states and citizens against citizens — with those who buck the federal message being painted as unpatriotic and even dangerous. More Big Tech censorship of health-related information. More globalism, more collectivism, more regulation, more government controls.
Becerra is bringing the big guns of Holder-type pit bull, take-no-prisoners’ politics to the coronavirus debate. And nobody known it better than Becerra.
From The Mercury News: “As for his not being a health professional, Becerra reminded … that HHS is staffed with ‘skilled doctors, scientists, researchers, auditors, law enforcers — many at high levels. It’s a big place. What we need is leadership.’”
Emphasis on “enforcers.”
This is what Becerra is bringing to HHS. This is how Becerra will lead America through the coronavirus future. This is why Becerra was chosen for HHS secretary.
He’s the Eric Holder of the health world.
And he’s got a legal background, a cadre of high-powered political allies and a perfect cause to bring his socialist, collectivist goals for America to fruition: the fear called coronavirus. Never let a crisis go to waste. Becerra, it can be certain, won’t. A good socialist wingman never does.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.
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