Senate Committee Advances Biden’s Labor Secretary Nominee Julie Su

The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) committee voted today 11 to 10 to advance Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su’s re-nomination to the post permanently to the full senate.

The committee met behind closed doors to take an “off the floor” vote this afternoon and, reportedly with little or no discussion, voted along strict party lines in favor of Su.

Su herself was not in attendance.

This is the second time the committee has voted party line to move Su through the process, though the first time (when she was originally nominated for the position the last year) the hearing was public, Su was there, and Republican senators shredded her record in California, amongst other things.

While she avoided similar criticism today, yesterday Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy took to the floor to denounce the secret nature of the meeting and Su’s tenure as acting secretary.

“(The) decision to not hold a public hearing on Ms. Su is unacceptable and shows a lack of transparency from the Majority. It undermines the Committee’s constitutional duty to advise and consent on presidential nominees,” said Cassidy. “No one is above accountability, especially an unconfirmed yet acting cabinet-level nominee with massive influence over our nation’s economy.”

In California, Su is known for her massive bungling of the unemployment benefits system during the pandemic, leading to at least $32 billion lost to fraud and leaving a (currently) $20.5 billion dollar debt to the federal government, a debt being paid back with higher unemployment insurance taxes on local businesses.

She also helped write and zealously enforced the anti-freelancer AB-5 regulations and her on-going attempts to shoehorn those concepts in at a federal level have already been met with protests and lawsuits.

As for what comes next, that is technically unknown but almost certain to follow the pattern set last year after she was first nominated:

She got through committee, then the Biden administration realized they did not have the votes to officially confirm her (as required by the constitution,) so the administration points to a government legal opinion that she can stay as acting secretary until whenever, and she just muddles through the year as “acting” – though with all the powers and prerogatives that a real one would have –  secretary.

If Su were to face a vote of the full Senate and lose, she would be done.  If the administration were to nominate someone else they think could get confirmed, the act of nominating someone else would quickly end her tenure as acting secretary.

So, for Su another year of “acting” secretary and another year of being in the line of presidential succession.

Shudder.