[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 64 (Wednesday, May 8, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3216-S3217]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       NOMINATION OF THOMAS PEREZ

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, this morning I would like to say a few 
words about the nomination of Thomas Perez as Labor Secretary.
  The Perez nomination has generated a fair amount of controversy. For 
those who haven't tuned in yet to the debate surrounding his 
nomination, I would like to take a few minutes this morning to explain 
why.
  The first thing to say about this nomination is that neither I nor 
anyone else on this side of the aisle has anything against Mr. Perez 
personally. As a graduate of Harvard Law School, there are a lot of 
things he could have done other than advocate for those struggling on 
the fringes of our society.
  Yet when it comes to a vote such as this, we have to weigh a lot more 
than a nominee's intentions. We have to look at how those intentions 
square with the higher obligation that any nominee, but especially a 
Cabinet nominee, has to the rule of law. It is on this point where this 
nomination becomes so controversial and where the deference that 
Senators of both parties generally grant Presidents when it comes to 
picking Cabinet nominees begins to break down.
  By all accounts, Tom Perez is not just a man with a heart for the 
poor, he is a committed ideologue who appears willing, quite frankly, 
to say or do anything to achieve his ideological end.
  His willingness, time and again, to bend or ignore the law and 
misstate the facts in order to advance his far-left ideology leads me 
and others to conclude he would continue to do so if he were confirmed 
to another and much more consequential position of public trust.
  Take, for instance, his efforts while on the Montgomery County 
Council to get Canadian drugs imported to the United States. According 
to the Washington Post, Perez tried to get the county to import these 
drugs even after--even after--a top FDA official said doing so would 
be, in his words, ``undeniably illegal.''
  What was Perez's response? ``Federal law is muddled,'' he said at the 
time. ``Sometimes you have to push the envelope.''
  Think about that statement. ``Sometimes you have to push the 
envelope.'' Is that the kind of approach to Federal law we want in 
those we confirm to run Federal agencies? Folks who think if a Federal 
law is inconvenient to their ends they can simply characterize it as

[[Page S3217]]

unclear and use that as an excuse to do whatever they want?
  If that is not a red flag for those of us who have to review a 
Presidential nominee, I don't know what is.
  Now, again, someone might say everybody in politics has to make 
judgments about how a given law is to be interpreted. Those who 
disagree with those judgments call it pushing the envelope. Mr. Perez, 
however, does not merely push the envelope. All too often he 
circumvents or ignores a law with which he disagrees.
  Here are a few examples: As a member of the Montgomery County 
Council, Mr. Perez pushed through a county policy that encouraged the 
circumvention of Federal immigration law. Later, as head of the Federal 
Government's top voting rights watchdog, he refused to protect the 
right to vote for Americans of all races, in violation of the very law 
he was charged to enforce.
  In the same post at the Department of Justice, Perez directed the 
Federal Government to sue, against the advice of career attorneys in 
his own office. In another case involving a Florida woman who was 
lawfully exercising her First Amendment right to protest in front of an 
abortion clinic, the Federal judge who threw out Mr. Perez's lawsuit 
said he was ``at a loss as to why the government chose to prosecute 
this particular case'' in the first place.
  This is what pushing the envelope means in the case of Mr. Perez--a 
flippant and dismissive attitude about the boundaries everyone else has 
to follow for the sake of the liberal causes in which he believes. In 
short, it means a lack of respect for the rule of law and a lack of 
respect for the need of those in positions of power to follow it.
  Just as troubling, however, is the fact that Mr. Perez has been 
called to account for his failures to follow the law, and he has been 
less than forthright about his actions when called to account. When he 
testified that politics played no role in his office's decision not to 
pursue charges against members of a far-left group who may have tried 
to prevent others from voting, for instance, the Department's own 
watchdog said ``Perez's testimony did not reflect the entire story.'' 
And a Federal judge said the evidence before him ``appear[ed] to 
contradict . . . Perez's testimony.''
  Perez has also made misleading statements about this case under 
oath--under oath--to Congress and the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.
  Mr. Perez's involvement in an alleged quid pro quo deal with the city 
of St. Paul, MN, also fits the pattern. Here was a case where Perez was 
allegedly so concerned about a potential Supreme Court challenge to the 
legality of a theory he championed in housing discrimination suits 
known as ``disparate impact,'' he quietly worked out a deal with St. 
Paul officials whereby they would withdraw their appeal to the Supreme 
Court of a disparate impact case if he arranged for the Federal 
Government to throw out two whistleblower complaints against St. Paul 
that could have recovered millions of dollars for the taxpayers that 
had been falsely obtained. The two whistleblowers' complaints were 
dropped, and the Supreme Court never heard the disparate impact case.
  Perez told investigators he hadn't even heard of the disparate impact 
case until the Court initially decided to hear it. But that has been 
contradicted by HUD Deputy Assistant Secretary Sara Pratt, who told 
investigators she and Mr. Perez discussed the case well before that.
  Taken together, all of this paints the picture, for me at least, not 
of a passionate liberal who sees himself as patiently operating within 
the system and through the democratic process to advance a particular 
set of strongly held beliefs but a crusading ideologue whose conviction 
about his own rightness on the issues leads him to believe the law does 
not apply to him. Unbound by the rules that apply to everyone else, 
Perez seems to view himself as free to employ whatever means--whatever 
means--at his disposal, legal or otherwise, to achieve his ideological 
goals.
  To say this is problematic would be an understatement. As Secretary 
of Labor, Perez could be handling numerous contentious issues and 
implementing many politically sensitive laws, including laws enforcing 
the disclosure of political activity by labor unions. Perez's devotion 
to the cause of involuntary universal voter registration is also deeply 
concerning to me personally, and I would imagine many of my colleagues 
in the Senate also believe in the absolute centrality of maintaining 
the integrity of the vote.
  Americans of all political persuasions have the right to expect the 
head of such a sensitive department, whether appointed by a Republican 
or Democrat, will implement and follow the law in a fair and reasonable 
way. I do not believe they could expect as much from Mr. Perez.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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