Frustrations with Health and Human Services chief Xavier Becerra’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic have grown to the point that one outside expert says the secretary must “step up or step aside” — and several Biden administration officials reportedly have made similar comments, albeit off the record.
“He hasn’t shown up,” Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute and a leading Covid analyst, tells the Washington Post in a lengthy piece detailing complaints, both inside and outside the Biden administration, about Becerra’s leadership. “An HHS secretary has so much authority and power to help. And we have no evidence that any of it is being exerted.”
One unnamed senior administration official told the Post that Becerra “is taking too passive a role in what may be the most defining challenge to the administration,” and some administration officials have openly discussed who might do a better job at HHS, the Post’s Dan Diamond, Yasmeen Abutaleb and Tyler Pager report.
Becerra’s appointment as HHS secretary drew some initial skepticism because the former congressman and California attorney general had little health-care experience. But Becerra’s defenders say it’s unfair to blame him because the Covid response is being run by the White House and he wasn’t given a clear role.
A White House spokesperson dismissed the criticism of Becerra as “anonymous gossip” and told the Post that “HHS is one of the most critical agencies in this fight and we have built a coordinated operation that is working together day and night, every single day of the week.”
The bottom line: Despite the frustrations, the Post reports that “informal conversations about replacing Becerra are unlikely to escalate to serious deliberations in the near future.”
