The Senate confirmed Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.) as Secretary of Labor this afternoon. It will be worth watching whether President Obama acknowledges her confirmation in his State of the Union speech tonight — and if so how prominently. Even as the momentum for card check slows down, Solis’s confirmation is a big win for organized labor, whose agenda she has consistently promoted.
For more on labor issues in the State of the Union , see here.
For more on Solis, see here.
For more on card check, see here.
Today’s Washington Examiner proposes some questions which Senators should ask Obama Labor Secretary nominee Hilda Solis.
Solis is treasurer and a member of the board of directors of American Rights at Work (ARW), the 501c4, non-profit group that has received at least $1 million in contributions from labor unions. ARW spent more than $230,000 in 2007 and 2008 lobbying Congress on two bills Solis actively co-sponsored – the Employee Free Choice Act and the Public Safety Employer/Employee Cooperation Act. Both bills are top priorities for labor bosses who spent in excess of $300 million electing Democrats to Congress in 2008. Solis failed to note her role as ARW treasurer on her congressional disclosure reports, as she is required to do under House rules. As treasurer, she was required by IRS rules to account for all spending by the group, so her role was hardly ceremonial or passive, as claimed by her supporters.
But ARW also spent thousands of dollars on television spots described by the group in its report to the FEC as “electioneering communications.” Since as treasurer, Solis is required to approve all ARW spending, she must have signed off on the spots. This may well put her and ARW in violation of the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002. Among the Republicans targeted by ARW were incumbents Norm Coleman, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Gordon Smith, and John Sununu.
Hardly the kind of thing to make Republican Senators feel charitable toward her.
But ethics rules and possible conflicts of interest aside, Solis’s close involvement with ARW alone should make her ability to carry out her job in an impartial manner suspect (as I’ve noted previously).
For more on the Solis nomination, see here, here, here, and here.
This afternoon, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee abruptly canceled a session to consider the nomination of Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.) for Labor Secretary, after USA Today reported that her husband paid $6,400 to settle tax liens yesterday. As embarrassing as this is to the Obama administration, coming on the heels of two nominations being sunk over tax problems, Solis’s nomination should be of concern for other reasons. As The Washington Post‘s Michael Fletcher notes, her nomination “had been delayed by questions over her role on the board of the pro-labor organization American Rights at Work.”
American Rights at Work’s website still lists her as a board member. That is no small thing. Her membership on the board, combined with her voting record and campaign donation history, should raise serious doubts regarding her ability to consider disputes involving labor unions in an impartial fashion.
For more on the Solis nomination, see here, here, and here.
According to the Associated Press, President-elect Barack Obama is about to name Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.) as Secretary of Labor. If Rep. Solis’s voting record is any guide to how she plans to run the Department, it is not encouraging — it consistently shows her voting in favor of greater government spending programs favored by organized labor (including the auto maker bailout).
In addition, her apparent closeness to organized labor should be cause for concern. Labor unions, which she should be tasked with overseeing, are among her biggest campaign contributors. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, during the last election cycle, her top four donors — and 14 of her top 21 donors — were labor unions. Her relationships with union leaders are a legitimate topic that Senators should address in her confirmation hearing.
Rep. Solis’s voting record is ranked at:
So how could it have been worse? If Obama had actually named Mary Beth Maxwell, who heads the pro-union lobby group American Rights at Work, and whose name had been floated prior to today. Maxwell is a professional pro-union advocate whose organization agitates for the kind of labor regulation that has brought the Detroit Big Three (as well as some steel companies and airlines) to their current dire state — hardly what the American economy needs at this time.
So maybe the talk about Maxwell should make us thankful for small favors — very small favors. But American workers should hold on to their wallets just the same. If Rep. Solis’s labor allies were to have their way, more and more workers would be paying compulsory union dues — which then go on to support candidates the union leaders favor.
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