Source: United States Senator for Kentucky Mitch McConnell
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding President Biden’s nominations:
“The Biden Administration’s reckless economic policies have hurt American workers and families from the beginning.
“Right from the start of their one-party government, Democrats used party-line votes to light trillions of dollars on fire and supercharge inflation that’s still hammering this country today.
“After two years of reckless policies and human pain, the American people voted for checks and balances. They elected a Republican House and a narrowly-divided Senate to pump the brakes on the radicalism.
“But there’s an old saying in Washington that ‘personnel is policy.’
“So while the American people put a stop to reckless legislation last November, President Biden continues to send reckless nominations to the Senate.
“They want to accomplish through Big Government regulations what the voters have stopped them from doing in Congress.
“This morning, the HELP Committee is hearing from Julie Su, President Biden’s nominee to run the Department of Labor.
“Ms. Su has a lengthy track record for all the wrong reasons.
“Before entering the Biden Administration, she presided over a disaster as head of the state labor department in California. Tens of billions of dollars in fraudulent payments went out the door on her watch. The state auditor found Ms. Su and her department were totally asleep at the switch on anti-fraud efforts.
“Even the Los Angeles Times had to label her performance an ‘epic failure.’
“Our supply chains are already in enough peril, due in part to high-stakes labor negotiations. Think about the negotiations to keep open the ports on the West Coast. Think about the ripple effects. Our national economy cannot afford a track record of ‘epic failure’ leading the federal Department of Labor.
“She also supported and helped implement a controversial new California law that essentially declared war on independent contractors and tried to give Big Labor special interests veto power over the entire gig economy.
“In essence, these far-left Democrats want every rideshare driver, hairdresser, or personal trainer to be reclassified and handled more like a corporate employee. All so that part of their paychecks could be vacuumed up and donated to left-wing political causes.
“The same partisan inflexibility has defined Ms. Su’s time as Deputy Secretary of Labor on the national level. From the powerful number-two job, she helped President Biden try to force that California model onto the entire country — a giant gift for Big Labor bosses at the expense of workers and consumers alike.
“She’s also signaled that she wants to help lead the far left’s crusade against the current joint-employer rule — yet another effort to give big-money union bosses even more power to squash innovation and skim money from workers’ paychecks. What they can’t get through legislation, they intend to push forward through regulations.
“No wonder that an unending parade of small business leaders, independent contractors, and other job creators have written the Senate, begging us to demand a fairer and more mainstream Labor Secretary.
“Confirming this nominee would compound the economic pain the Biden Administration has already caused.”