Written by Nathaniel Manor
On Monday, the California State Legislature held a joint hearing between four committees on the failures of the Employment Development Department (EDD) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Chief among them was the 26 week wait period between when workers applied for unemployment benefits and received them. In addition, state Auditor Elaine Howle revealed that the EDD wasn’t processing claims correctly when asked to testify before the committees.
“We found that nearly 50% of those claims were kicked out, where they had to manually do some analysis and do some work with the constituent to get them benefits,” Howle explained. Additionally, she found that the call center didn’t answer or return messages, $10 billion suddenly went missing, 77,000 identity theft claims, and fraudulent claims accounted for $11.8 billion.
Instead of taking responsibility for her actions, EDD director Rita Saenz downplayed the chaos, attributing them to “system” failures instead of lousy management. Basically, she’s trying to lump the EDD shortcomings in with the myth of systemic racism as a way to escape her neglect.
Luckily, State Senator Brian Jones didn’t take the farce lying down. Instead, he put out a statement aiming at EDD as well as Newsom’s incompetence on the issue, “For the last several years EDD has been unresponsive to Californians, mired in fraud and extremely wasteful of taxpayers’ dollars. Governor Newsom got elected partly on his claims of vast experience as a seven-year Mayor and eight years as Lt. Governor, yet EDD has gotten even worse under his watch. A hearing by JLAC is needed to determine whether management of EDD has turned the corner or if it is still floundering,” Jones said. JLAC refers to the Joint Legislative Audit Committee.
The real culprit in this is the massive welfare state. If the pandemic taught us anything, it’s that the radical Leftist Democrats will do anything to stay in power, even if it means the government acting as life support for the unemployed. The best way to help those in need is to bolster private charities and religious institutions to get the needy back on their feet. California has the highest percentage of unemployed workers in the nation (7.5% unemployment rate), and with EDD, that number will only grow.
