[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 32 (Tuesday, February 24, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2399-S2402]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


         NOMINATION OF HILDA L. SOLIS TO BE SECRETARY OF LABOR

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will go 
into executive session and the clerk will report the nomination.
  The assistant legislative clerk read the nomination of Hilda L. 
Solis, of California, to be Secretary of Labor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time on this nomination will be equally 
divided until 4:30 p.m. today.
  The Senator from Washington is recognized.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, the Senate is not in order.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator will suspend. The Senate will be 
in order. The Senator from Washington is recognized.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, the business before the Senate is now the 
nomination of President Obama's nominee as Secretary of Labor, U.S. 
Representative Hilda Solis.
  My colleagues on the Senate HELP Committee worked together to move 
forward Hilda Solis's nomination. I have come to the floor today to 
urge the full Senate to join me in supporting her confirmation so we 
can fill this critically important Cabinet position as soon as 
possible.
  Today, America's families are facing incredible challenges. They are 
struggling with record unemployment and a devastating economic crisis. 
They need and they deserve an advocate in the administration who is 
passionate about public service and committed to fighting for them. 
Representative Solis is that person. I want to share today a part of 
her HELP Committee testimony. If confirmed, Hilda Solis wrote that we 
have her solemn commitment to ``work hard every day to ensure that 
middle-class families do not lose hope.''
  I thank Representative Solis for her willingness to answer President 
Obama's call to serve. She has been very responsive to the questions 
that were submitted to her by the HELP Committee. She has been a 
dedicated public servant, and she has an extensive public record of 
supporting working families. Moving forward on this nomination this 
afternoon will send a crucial message to working families that we 
understand their needs and that they are absolutely essential to our 
economic recovery efforts. We cannot afford to wait.
  For anyone who is unfamiliar with her background, I would like to 
share with you a little bit about Representative Solis. She was born in 
California and grew up as one of seven children. Her mother was an 
immigrant from Nicaragua. Her father worked as a farmworker, a railroad 
worker, and a Teamsters shop steward in a battery recycling plant. He 
raised his family to understand that joining a union had helped them 
secure a place in America's middle class. Her parents stressed values 
such as education and hard work, public service and commitment to 
family.
  Even though they could not afford to go to college themselves, her 
mother and father sacrificed to make sure their children would reach 
their full potential.
  With the support of her family and the help of Pell grants and 
student loans, Hilda Solis became the first in her family to graduate 
from college. Her sisters followed in her footsteps. One earned a Ph.D. 
in public health and two others became engineers. Thanks to the values 
she grew up with, Hilda Solis always worked to give back to her 
community. She has served as the director of the California Student 
Opportunity and Access Program, and as a college trustee, because she 
wanted to ensure that other students

[[Page S2400]]

could have the same opportunity she did to get a college degree.
  In 1992 she expanded her service to the public arena and was elected 
to the California State Assembly. In 1994, she became the first Latino 
State senator in California. As a State lawmaker, she wrote a record 17 
laws to protect victims of domestic violence. She championed worker 
rights. She helped small businesses, and she worked to strengthen the 
economy.
  Hilda Solis's achievements and service to students, to her State, and 
to the U.S. House of Representatives are proof that anything is 
possible in America, no matter what your background is. She is an 
example of why we have to ensure that every child and every family has 
a chance to succeed. Her experience is a quintessential example of the 
American dream. I should add I feel a very close connection to her 
because her background is not that different from my own. I too am one 
of seven children of loving, committed parents who taught us that with 
hard work anything is possible in America. My family faced very tough 
times when I was young. When my dad developed MS, we depended on food 
stamps for a while. My brothers, sisters, and I all were able to go on 
for college because of Pell grants and student loans.
  Like Hilda Solis, I grew up believing that everyone can succeed if we 
give them a fighting chance. That is part of the reason why I know she 
will join me in fighting day and night for our working families in our 
struggling economy today.
  Not only is Hilda Solis the right choice to serve as Labor Secretary, 
I want to emphasize how critical it is for us to move forward and fill 
this Cabinet position. For the last 8 years, working families have felt 
like an afterthought of the previous administration. I can tell you, as 
chair of the Employment and Workplace Safety Committee, it is long past 
time for a change. I am hopeful that the Department of Labor will soon 
have a leader who stands ready to help the Department fulfill its very 
core responsibilities to America's working men and women.
  For years, I have said, if you do not invest in the growth and 
development of America's workforce, our families, our communities and 
our Nation will suffer in the long run. Now, today, with the 
unemployment at 7.6 percent, with 3 million jobs lost over the past 
year, and literally thousands of more pink slips going out every month, 
with hundreds of thousands of new unemployment insurance claims being 
filed every week, workers need an advocate in the new administration 
who will stand up for them. They need someone who believes, as I do, 
that investing in them is investing in our future. They need someone 
who believes that their Government should work for them during the good 
times and help them succeed during the hard times. They need someone 
who will be their voice in every economic recovery discussion.
  As we all work very hard to help our economy recover and grow again, 
I believe three things are very clear: First, we need to create new 
jobs and help Americans who are out of work or underemployed find 
employment that ensures they are able to stay in the middle class.
  Secondly, we need to help low-skilled and low-earning workers get the 
skills they need to find family wage jobs in healthy industries, so 
they can become part of the middle class.
  And, third, we need to make smart investments that will create jobs, 
increase worker training, and make us more productive and competitive 
in the global economy. I am confident that as Labor Secretary, Hilda 
Solis will join me in working to reach those goals.
  Our working families deserve a workforce system that is innovative, 
that is modern, and can meet the needs of the millions of unemployed 
and underemployed American workers. I am confident she is committed to 
making the reauthorization of our Nation's workforce system a top 
priority of her first year.
  I look forward to working with her to help ensure families can 
balance the competing needs of work and home by expanding job-protected 
leave and other family-friendly work policies.
  To be fully productive, workers need to know that their employers and 
their Government are doing everything they can to ensure they are safe 
and they are healthy on the job.
  Finally, I look forward to working with her to make OSHA and MSHA 
proactive agencies again where the health and the safety of our workers 
is their first priority. We have a lot of big challenges ahead of us in 
this country, but we also have a very big opportunity.
  I know that together we can help our workers access training for 21st 
century careers, including the emerging green jobs we hear so much 
about; we can help our workers balance the needs of home and careers 
and help them keep safe on the job. We can work to protect their rights 
to organize and secure a better economic future for themselves; and, 
ultimately, we can help our working families improve their quality of 
life.
  Now, more than ever, workers deserve a leader who is dedicated to 
seeing them succeed. I look forward to working with Secretary Solis and 
the Department to do that. I encourage all of our colleagues to support 
this critical nomination.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming is recognized.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I want to follow the comments of the Senator 
from Washington, being the ranking member on the committee that worked 
on this nomination. I thank Senator Kennedy, Senator Murray, and other 
Senators on the committee for their help, cooperation, and due 
diligence on this matter.
  I would be remiss if I did not thank Secretary Elaine Chao for the 
effort she put in during the time she was in office. I would mention 
that she made some of the first changes to OSHA and we made the first 
change in MSHA in 28 years while she was in office. It was a very 
bipartisan effort that we made, worked on both sides of the aisle, and 
done in 6 weeks, which is a record time for any of the committees 
around here to go through the regular process. There are other things 
we need to do in both OSHA and MSHA. I hope we have a chance to work on 
that.
  I am here today to discuss the nomination of Representative Hilda 
Solis to serve as Secretary of Labor. This nomination followed regular 
order and worked through the committee process. Carefully reviewing 
nominations for Cabinet positions through the regular order is critical 
to fulfilling our constitutional advice and consent obligations.
  As Senators, one of our most important responsibilities is confirming 
qualified and hopefully superior nominees to lead our executive 
agencies. In order to fulfill our responsibilities under the advice and 
consent clause properly, we have developed a process for vetting the 
President's nominees, all Presidents' nominees.
  This vetting process typically includes a committee hearing, which 
encompasses a review of the nominee's credentials; a background check 
to screen for conflicts of interest, often related to financial 
holdings or associations with outside groups; followed by a markup and 
floor consideration, which is what we are doing today.
  I am pleased that we are proceeding in this fashion with respect to 
the nominee for the Secretary of Labor. Representative Solis has a 
diverse background and a compelling personal story. Her life is one 
that epitomizes the American dream. Her dedication to public service is 
admirable, and it should serve as an example to young people 
everywhere.

  Once confirmed, as chief Labor official, she is charged with 
overseeing job training programs, private pension plans, veterans 
employment and training issues, protecting America's workers' 
occupational safety and health, as well as ensuring mine safety and 
health, to name a very few of the things.
  The Labor Secretary manages an annual budget of approximately $53 
billion and nearly 17,000 full-time employees. Unfortunately, based on 
my review of her background, I am concerned about a lack of management 
experience that is needed to meet the demands of the job, even though I 
recognize that it is the President's prerogative in selecting his 
Cabinet.
  In reviewing this nomination, we followed the same due diligence and 
background check that we follow for all nominees in both this 
administration and the previous administration. Unfortunately, we were 
not able to act on

[[Page S2401]]

this nomination for over a month because the nominee had numerous 
errors and omissions in the documents she filed with the committee in 
her application, as well as the financial disclosures to the House of 
Representatives, going back several years, and the Office of Government 
Ethics.
  Because of these errors, we had to reconstruct her application and 
her financial statements to remove the possibility of any conflict of 
interest. If we had not faced these paperwork problems, we probably 
would have been able to vote on her nomination in January.
  One of the conflict of interest issues that concerns me most is 
Representative Solis's position as a treasurer, a position with 
fiduciary responsibilities, of a 501(c)(4), a not-for-profit lobbying 
firm. As an accountant and the coauthor of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, I 
can assure my colleagues that there is no such thing as an ``honorary'' 
treasurer of a 501(c)(4) organization that lobbies Congress. So-called 
``honorary'' positions are reserved for board of director positions on 
501(c)(3) charitable organizations but not positions with a fiduciary 
responsibility, such as treasurers or general counsels for 501(c)(4) 
groups.
  I was also deeply troubled to learn that this entity has filed 
lobbying disclosure paperwork with the House of Representatives that 
shows it lobbies in support of bills that Representative Solis 
cosponsored and in which she would be involved as the top Labor 
official in the executive branch.
  To address these concerns, I have obtained from Representative Solis 
a sworn affidavit that she has no check-writing or signing authority as 
treasurer for this 501(c)(4) entity, nor does she have any control over 
the ability to control this entity's expenditures for campaign ads. 
This affidavit goes a long way to showing that no conflict of interest 
appears to have taken place.
  In addition, the entity has filed amended filings with the Federal 
Election Commission that do not list Representative Solis as being 
responsible for any monies going toward the campaign ads.
  To avoid any future conflict of interest, I hope and expect that 
Speaker Pelosi will immediately amend the House ethics rules to 
prohibit Members of Congress from serving in a position of fiduciary 
responsibility for 501(c)(4) board organizations. It is a blatant 
conflict of interest, not allowed in the Senate, and the House of 
Representatives should prohibit it immediately.
  Additionally, the press recently reported that there were unpaid tax 
liens related to Representative Solis's husband's small auto repair 
business. It now appears that all of the outstanding liens are paid, 
and all of them were her husband's liens. I have obtained a letter from 
the County of Los Angeles treasurer and tax collector verifying that 
the county liens have been released.
  My staff also held a conference call with officials from the State of 
California and received word that all outstanding state liens have been 
released. Of equal importance, I am concerned that Representative Solis 
simply failed to fully respond to a host of very basic labor policy 
questions posed at the committee in the hearing and in writing.
  The nominee dodged legitimate questions relating to the Employee Free 
Choice Act, right-to-work laws, employment standards, and overtime 
regulations, to name a few. This is not a nomination for a judicial 
position where a nominee quite understandably should not be expected to 
respond to hypotheticals involving cases that might come before her. 
This is a policy post, and policy questions deserve full answers from 
any nominee. I am disappointed that we did not receive them, and 
equally disappointed that her reticence to discuss them precluded us 
from having a more thoughtful and necessary discussion of her views.
  I was very disappointed when President Obama issued an executive 
order that discriminates against the 94.7 percent of the construction 
workers in Wyoming who are nonunion members, and 84.4 percent of 
construction workers nationwide. The order reverses the Bush policy of 
neutrality on Government contracts and instead encourages agencies to 
require their private contractors to engage in collective bargaining 
agreements on contracts of $25 million or more. During the confirmation 
proceedings, I asked the nominee whether she would support the neutral 
Bush policy. Her response was that she had not studied it nor 
participated in discussions about repealing it. Now that it has been 
repealed, I hope she will study the issue closely and urge the 
administration not to further expand the executive order to smaller 
contracts.
  I am very concerned that the administration is choosing to limit 
access to good construction projects at a time when construction 
unemployment is extremely high and a tremendous amount of taxpayer 
dollars is being spent on building projects. In many communities, the 
only construction projects bid on may well be Federal and not be 
restricted to 15.6 percent of construction workers who are 
unionized. This policy excludes many small and local contractors and 
also disadvantages women and minority employees who are less likely to 
be union members. Reserving the spoils of the stimulus bill for large 
unionized contractors seems to me the exact wrong policy for the 
current economic crisis. I hope Secretary Solis will take a careful 
study of these concerns and advise the administration that a neutral 
policy achieves the most equitable result and, even more importantly, 
will ensure that taxpayers get the most for their money.

  Finally, I would also like to mention that prior to her hearing, 
Representative Solis and I discussed the Workforce Investment Act and 
how we need to reauthorize it immediately. I have been working on that 
for about 4 years, and we passed it unanimously through the Senate 
before, and it would train 900,000 workers for higher skilled jobs. I 
do not understand why we cannot get it through both bodies and get it 
conferenced and get it enacted. Instead of training people to get 
higher skilled jobs, we keep sending the jobs over to India and China 
and other places. So at a time when our economy is being challenged to 
create jobs that will bolster our infrastructure and our competitive 
edge in the 21st century, the skills of our workforce have not kept 
pace. We cannot afford to overlook the importance of providing lifelong 
access to quality education and training in our workforce. That is why 
I strongly believe we must renew and improve the Workforce Investment 
Act. Governors from States all over ask for more flexibility so they 
can actually use the money in that act. That is a law that would help 
provide American workers with the skills necessary to compete in the 
global economy.
  I look forward to working with Representative Solis in her new 
Cabinet position as Secretary of Labor, and her staff, on this and many 
other labor and economic issues facing our country.
  I know Members of the Senate are anxious to have a permanent Labor 
Secretary in place. I am too. It took longer than I would have liked to 
complete the necessary vetting, and, again, I wish to thank all my 
colleagues for their patience and help in allowing us to work through 
the regular order to ensure we fulfill our duties under the 
Constitution. Now that we have done our due diligence, we can move to 
have this nomination confirmed.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
the following documents: the affidavit from Representative Solis 
stating she did not have check-signing authority for American Rights at 
Work or control of their lobbying or campaign expenditures; and a 
statement from the Los Angeles County treasurer and Tax Collector's 
office stating that all liens relating to Representative Solis' 
husband's small business have been released.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                       Declaration of Hilda Solis

       1. My name is Hilda Solis.
       2. From 2004 to 2007 I served as a board member and the 
     treasurer of the nonprofit organization American Rights at 
     Work (ARW).
       3. At no time did I have authority to sign checks or make 
     expenditures on behalf of ARW.
       4. At no time did I control or have the ability to control 
     ARW's lobbying or campaign expenditures.
       I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is 
     true and correct. Executed on February __, 2009, in 
     Washington, DC.

[[Page S2402]]

     
                                  ____
                                            County of Los Angeles,


                                  Treasurer and Tax Collector,

                               Los Angeles, CA, February 10, 2009.
       To Whom it May Concern: A search of our records reveals 
     that all unsecured property taxes due as of February 10, 
     2009, have been paid in full and the associated liens filed 
     in connection with the following names have been released:
       Sams Fore Lessee
       Sayyad, Sam
       Sayyad, Sam DBA Sam's Auto Center
       There were no liens filed by the Tax Collector under Sam's 
     Foreign and Domestic Auto.
       Should you need any further information, please contact me 
     directly at (213) 893-7968.
           Very truly yours,
     Mark J. Saladino,
       Treasurer and Tax Collector.
     Kathy Waters,
       Operations Chief, Revenue and Enforcement Division.

  Mr. ENZI. I thank the Presiding Officer and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I would like to speak 6 or 7 minutes as 
in morning business, but I also would like to ask--if there is nobody 
on the other side of the aisle who would intervene--if I could have 
another 15 minutes after this time. I do not wish to take advantage of 
anything, but if they do not know of any other people from the 
Democratic Party who wish to speak, I would like to speak longer. But 
right now I ask unanimous consent for 6 or 7 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. I forget. This is for my first 5 or 6 minutes?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa is correct.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. I thank the Chair.
  (The remarks of Mr. Grassley are printed in today's Record under 
``Morning Business.'')
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Now, Mr. President, if I could proceed to that other 
speech. If there are people from the other party, from the majority 
party, who come to the Chamber, I will be glad to yield the floor at 
the time of their appearance.
  (The remarks of Mr. Grassley pertaining to the introduction of S. 458 
are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')

                          ____________________