Congress will get its first shot this week at questioning the Biden administration’s nominee for Labor Secretary.
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, who has been nominated to serve as U.S. Secretary of Labor, will appear Feb. 4 before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, according to an announcement by the incoming chair, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), and the incoming ranking Republican member, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC). A live video of the 10:00 a.m. (EST) hearing can be viewed here.
Walsh has been serving as mayor since 2014. Before that, he served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives for 17 years, overlapping with his work as a union official. He is expected to face questions about how he would manage the Department of Labor, as well as his ties to organized labor and federal extortion charges brought against two of his assistants in relation to a pressure campaign to hire union workers that were later overturned.
If confirmed by the Senate, Walsh would replace former Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia and would have a role in reviewing the Labor Department’s recent guidance on ESG investments, as well as determining whether the department reopens other regulatory projects finalized recently by the Employee Benefits Security Administration.
In the meantime, it has been surprisingly quiet with respect to the naming of other senior Labor positions.
A Jan. 25 report by Bloomberg suggested that an announcement was imminent that President Biden would nominate Julie Su to be Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Labor Department, but to date, an announcement has not been made. Su currently serves as Secretary for the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency.
Since then, Su held a press conference where she acknowledged that hackers, identity thieves and overseas criminal rings stole more than $11 billion of the $114 billion that California paid in unemployment claims last year. And it could get worse, as Su also noted that another $20 billion, or around 17% of the total, appears to be suspicious and could be fraudulent.
While the Biden administration has not confirmed either way, given the recent disclosure regarding the fraud scheme, it would appear the administration is giving additional scrutiny to Su’s purported nomination.
The Biden administration also has not yet announced an Assistant Secretary nominee to oversee the Employee Benefits Security Administration.
