JON GABRIEL: Julie Su put California’s economy in chaos. And Biden wants her as Labor secretary?

Serving in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Cabinet, Su allowed more than $11 billion in fraudulent unemployment claims during the pandemic.

“There is no sugarcoating the reality,” Su said when announcing the massive scam in 2021. “California did not have sufficient security measures in place to prevent this level of fraud, and criminals took advantage of the situation.”

As Labor secretary, she would oversee the nation’s unemployment insurance program. Over the COVID-19 era, that agency pumped $888 billion into job relief programs.

About one-eighth of that total was spent in California.

She supported a law that hurt many industries

Worse still, Su supported passage of California’s Assembly Bill 5, a law that essentially abolished independent contractors in the state as a shot at tech companies such as Uber and Lyft.

A court affirmed tech companies being able to exempt themselves via the ballot this week, and other politically powerful groups like doctors and lawyers were able to score themselves exemptions. (Even freelance journalists had to lobby to get themselves exempted from the law.)

AB 5 has wrecked California’s trucking industry, and the industry is currently mired in a legal fight while it’s already exacerbating the nation’s supply-chain woes.

Biden sought to bring AB 5 to the nation with the PRO Act last Congress. Since that stalled, the president is likely to push Su to execute it via administrative action.

Flashback: Why Team Biden might be purposefully grinding down the middle class.