Su’s record of blowing off oversight and failing at basic management and administration should be enough to scuttle her nomination.
Though Julie Su is President Biden’s nominee to be secretary of labor, she has been the deputy secretary of labor since July 2021. Because the previous secretary of labor, Marty Walsh, has already left the job to work for the NHL players’ union, Su is currently the acting secretary of labor.
Congressional oversight involves conducting hearings with the heads of executive-branch departments, and the House Committee on Education and the Workforce is, understandably, interested in having the secretary of labor testify. But Julie Su is blowing the committee off.
Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.) sent a letter to Su yesterday demanding that she appear before the committee on May 17. There’s a history of failing to respond to committee requests in a timely manner, Foxx writes. “During the week of March 27, Committee staff engaged with the Department to determine a time for you to appear before the Committee. However, despite offering dates that provided you with between nearly one month and nearly two months to prepare, we understand that you do not plan to make yourself available to the Committee before June,” the letter says.
“This is unacceptable, and it is an undue delay preventing the Committee from conducting its oversight work. Furthermore, it suggest that you are more concerned about protecting your record and your prospects as a nominee than fulfilling your obligation to respond to oversight and be accountable.”
Su’s confirmation hearing is tomorrow. Democrats hold a 51-49 advantage in the Senate, but Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) could be absent due to health problems. Democrats Jon Tester (Mont.) and Joe Manchin (W. Va.) are still undecided on whether they will support Su, as is Kyrsten Sinema (I., Ariz.), who caucuses with Democrats.
Su’s record as California labor secretary, the post she held from 2019 to 2021, was bad enough. Foxx takes issue with her record as deputy labor secretary, and now acting secretary, at the federal level.
“For example, despite the Department’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) budget increasing by $22 million — or nearly 10 percent — over the last four years, this agency is failing to do its job,” Foxx writes. “According to enforcement data, WHD collected the least amount of back wages for workers since Fiscal Year (FY) 2010, down by nearly 33 percent from four years ago. The number of workers receiving back wages is the lowest on record for WHD, down by more than 51 percent from four years ago. The number of enforcement hours and concluded cases have also reached their lowest levels on record. Remarkably, WHD’s performance is worse on all counts than was seen during the height of the pandemic in FY 2020 and 2021.”
Foxx also says that one of her first acts after becoming chairwoman of the committee this year was to reopen nine inquiries that Republicans made during the previous congress, when they were in the minority. “DOL’s response failed to provide complete answers to any of these inquiries,” Foxx writes. “To date, the Department has provided none of the requested documents or materials included in the inquiries that I resubmitted.”
Foxx makes clear that she opposes Su’s political agenda, describing it as “destructive” and saying that it has “stifled economic growth with more regulations and red tape, produced fewer results for workers and employers, and ballooned costs at the expense of the American taxpayer.” But even putting that aside, ignoring requests from congressional committees conducting routine oversight is not a good pattern of behavior for a cabinet secretary.
Rarely do cabinet nominees have as much directly relevant experience as Julie Su. Often, nominees are from the private sector or the elected parts of government. Senators have to do a fair amount of guessing as to how they would perform as a department secretary. Not so with Su. She was already secretary of labor for the most populous state in the country, she has been deputy secretary of labor for the federal government for almost two years, and she’s the acting secretary of labor right now. Her record of blowing off oversight and failing at basic management and administration should be enough to scuttle her nomination, without even getting to the ideological questions of her political agenda.