WASHINGTON — Former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius Tuesday blasted President Donald Trump's administration for slowing the transfer of power to President-elect Joe Biden.
Biden cannot formally begin the transition process — with access to briefings from federal agencies — until the General Services Administration issues a letter that recognizes him as the winner of the presidential election.
GSA Administrator Emily Murphy, a Trump appointee, has thus far refused to do so despite wide international recognition of Biden's victory by world leaders and media outlets.
The delay will hamper Biden's team's ability to prepare for taking over the federal government in January.
"It's only 10 weeks and that's not a very long time when you think of all the federal government. So every day counts. Every delay counts. And so we're in very unprecedented territory," said Sebelius, a two-term Kansas governor who served in President Barack Obama's Cabinet from 2009 to 2014.
Sebelius criticized GOP-elected officials, particularly Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, for backing Trump's refusal to concede.
"We've never seen elected officials just say... 'We're not going to turn over the reins of government. We're not going to recognize the winner as the winner,'" she said, noting that facilitating the transfer to Biden does not preclude Trump from pursuing recounts and lawsuits as he contests the election's outcome.
Sebelius recalled how in 2012 the Department of Health and Human Services was prepared for the possibility of handing over control to Republican nominee Mitt Romney if he had prevailed against Obama.
Romney's team had set up office space in Washington near the department in anticipation of a possible victory. When Obama won a second term, Sebelius said she remembers watching Romney's team move out of those offices.
"At the end of the day, what I think everybody who believes in this democracy wants is a peaceful transfer of power," Sebelius said.
Sebelius' former agency will be critically important to the transition from Trump to Biden during the COVID-19 pandemic.
HHS oversees the Food and Drug Administration, which will approve an eventual vaccine, the National Institutes of Health, which funds research on the virus and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which Sebelius described as the backbone of public health.
"HHS is at the front lines of the pandemic," she said, expressing concerns that the agency has been "hollowed out" under Trump.
Sebelius' home state of Kansas went for Trump by double digits both in 2016 and 2020, but she doesn't expect that will hamper the state's ability to work with the Biden administration.
"I think there will not be any longer this notion that you have to be nice to me to get on my good side and everything is a transactional issue," she said, saying that Biden would not make the same distinctions between red states and blue states as Trump.
"Governors deserve to know what it is that they can count on from the federal government. I can't imagine being a governor under this episode."
Sebelius, one of three women to serve as Kansas governor, said the election of Kamala Harris as the nation's first female vice president was a major step forward for the nation.
"I didn't realize how thrilled I would be until I saw her acceptance speech Saturday night and saw myself weeping," she said.
