Biden’s Weekly Address Shows Newsom’s Failures
Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d write. Joe Biden’s first weekly address as President is about me cleaning up Gavin Newsom’s mess.
The official White House video address is a conversation between Biden and one of my constituents. The Sacramento Bee reports:
“A Sacramento-area woman facing challenges during the coronavirus pandemic was featured as the first guest in President Joe Biden’s revamped weekly address. When the Roseville woman ran into problems navigating the state’s unemployment system, she got help from her state representative, Assemblyman Kevin Kiley. Voelkert discussed the loss of her job at the beginning of the pandemic and the trouble she encountered trying to get unemployment benefits and find a new job.”
In its coverage, Fox 40 noted: “Voelkert says she is still looking for a job, but that on Friday her issues with unemployment were resolved thanks to Assemblyman Kevin Kiley.”
It’s my amazing district office staff who deserve the credit. They’ve worked tirelessly over the last year to help countless victims of the EDD’s incompetence. But the irony must be too much for Newsom to handle: after he wrote Biden a delusional letter touting California as a “roadmap to success,” the President not only highlighted his historic failure, but personalized its devastating impact on ordinary Californians and featured the corrective efforts of his “chief antagonist.”
Newsom’s EDD debacle has reached tragically cartoonish proportions. The backlog of claims is now over 1 million. The fraud could reach a jaw-dropping $31 billion. (The cost of a Recall election – a frequent Newsom talking point – is a rounding error on that number.)
As if the inconceivable waste weren’t bad enough, proceeds from the fraud are being used by street gangs to buy weapons, according to district attorneys. Incredibly, Newsom tried to blame the federal government for all of this even though nothing like it is happening anywhere else and the State Auditor found he was warned three times to “beef up fraud protections.”
Meanwhile, we’ve had some good news in other quarters:
• The U.S. Supreme Court struck down Newsom’s ban on all indoor church services, with Chief Justice Roberts saying it “reflects not expertise” but “insufficient appreciation or consideration of the interests at stake.”
• The State Supreme Court shot down the absurd Special Interest lawsuit to overturn Prop. 22. The will of voters still means something in California.
• My Let Them Play resolution with James Gallagher now has 45 co-authors of both parties. It’s possible there may be movement this week.
And Recall petitions continue to flood the mailroom in what might be the most diverse political movement in California history. It turns out sanity and decency are principles with widespread appeal.
Join the fight to stop Newsom’s failures from going national
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