[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 53 (Monday, March 22, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Page S1662]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   NOMINATION OF MARTIN JOSEPH WALSH

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, now, on a completely different matter, 
this afternoon the Senate will vote on the President's nominee to head 
the Department of Labor.
  I will be voting against confirming Mr. Walsh. The Biden 
administration has already signaled they will ask him to implement a 
variety of policies that do not serve the long-term interests of 
American workers.
  Unfortunately, it appears that won't just be the case at the 
Department of Labor but throughout the Democratic agenda.
  One of the President's first acts in office was to kill thousands of 
American jobs, including union jobs, by canceling the Keystone XL 
Pipeline. Both, working Americans and domestic energy security, took a 
back seat to a leftwing signaling.
  We are hearing that the next few months might bring a so-called 
``infrastructure'' proposal that may actually be a Trojan horse for 
massive tax hikes and other job-killing, leftwing policies.
  Remember, the House Democrats tipped their hand last year. They 
published a sprawling proposal that pretended to be a highway bill but 
was really just a multithousand-page cousin of the Green New Deal. It 
would have plowed unbelievable sums of money not into the kinds of big, 
practical projects that Americans even think of as ``infrastructure'' 
but also into their obsessive focus on climate policies to the 
exclusion of everything else.
  Look, we know what kinds of policies are actually pro-job and pro-
worker. We know what kind of agenda helps American workers build all-
American prosperity up and down the income scale.
  We know that because, just over a year ago, before the pandemic, 4 
years of Republican policies had built one of the most inclusive and 
optimistic economies in modern history. Wages were growing faster at 
the bottom than at the top. Unemployment was at historic lows. American 
workers were a hot commodity and were getting compensated accordingly.
  Pro-worker prosperity does not entail having Big Government 
politicians or Big Labor bosses micromanage every aspect of the economy 
to suit liberal fads. It means remembering what kind of pro-worker, 
pro-growth, pro-opportunity policies built the best job market in 
recent history right before this pandemic.
  Those are the ideas and the solutions that were unlocking more money 
and more opportunities for American workers before COVID-19 took the 
world by storm. And those are the ideas and solutions the American 
people elected 50 Republican Senators to fight for.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The majority leader.

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