Executive Session

Floor Speech

EXECUTIVE SESSION -- (Senate - February 24, 2009)

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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, the business before the Senate is now the nomination of President Obama's nominee as Secretary of Labor, U.S. Representative HILDA SOLIS.

My colleagues on the Senate HELP Committee worked together to move forward HILDA SOLIS's nomination. I have come to the floor today to urge the full Senate to join me in supporting her confirmation so we can fill this critically important Cabinet position as soon as possible.

Today, America's families are facing incredible challenges. They are struggling with record unemployment and a devastating economic crisis. They need and they deserve an advocate in the administration who is passionate about public service and committed to fighting for them. Representative Solis is that person. I want to share today a part of her HELP Committee testimony. If confirmed, HILDA SOLIS wrote that we have her solemn commitment to ``work hard every day to ensure that middle-class families do not lose hope.''

I thank Representative Solis for her willingness to answer President Obama's call to serve. She has been very responsive to the questions that were submitted to her by the HELP Committee. She has been a dedicated public servant, and she has an extensive public record of supporting working families. Moving forward on this nomination this afternoon will send a crucial message to working families that we understand their needs and that they are absolutely essential to our economic recovery efforts. We cannot afford to wait.

For anyone who is unfamiliar with her background, I would like to share with you a little bit about Representative Solis. She was born in California and grew up as one of seven children. Her mother was an immigrant from Nicaragua. Her father worked as a farmworker, a railroad worker, and a Teamsters shop steward in a battery recycling plant. He raised his family to understand that joining a union had helped them secure a place in America's middle class. Her parents stressed values such as education and hard work, public service and commitment to family.

Even though they could not afford to go to college themselves, her mother and father sacrificed to make sure their children would reach their full potential.

With the support of her family and the help of Pell grants and student loans, HILDA SOLIS became the first in her family to graduate from college. Her sisters followed in her footsteps. One earned a Ph.D. in public health and two others became engineers. Thanks to the values she grew up with, HILDA SOLIS always worked to give back to her community. She has served as the director of the California Student Opportunity and Access Program, and as a college trustee, because she wanted to ensure that other students
could have the same opportunity she did to get a college degree.

In 1992 she expanded her service to the public arena and was elected to the California State Assembly. In 1994, she became the first Latino State senator in California. As a State lawmaker, she wrote a record 17 laws to protect victims of domestic violence. She championed worker rights. She helped small businesses, and she worked to strengthen the economy.

HILDA SOLIS's achievements and service to students, to her State, and to the U.S. House of Representatives are proof that anything is possible in America, no matter what your background is. She is an example of why we have to ensure that every child and every family has a chance to succeed. Her experience is a quintessential example of the American dream. I should add I feel a very close connection to her because her background is not that different from my own. I too am one of seven children of loving, committed parents who taught us that with hard work anything is possible in America. My family faced very tough times when I was young. When my dad developed MS, we depended on food stamps for a while. My brothers, sisters, and I all were able to go on for college because of Pell grants and student loans.

Like HILDA SOLIS, I grew up believing that everyone can succeed if we give them a fighting chance. That is part of the reason why I know she will join me in fighting day and night for our working families in our struggling economy today.

Not only is HILDA SOLIS the right choice to serve as Labor Secretary, I want to emphasize how critical it is for us to move forward and fill this Cabinet position. For the last 8 years, working families have felt like an afterthought of the previous administration. I can tell you, as chair of the Employment and Workplace Safety Committee, it is long past time for a change. I am hopeful that the Department of Labor will soon have a leader who stands ready to help the Department fulfill its very core responsibilities to America's working men and women.

For years, I have said, if you do not invest in the growth and development of America's workforce, our families, our communities and our Nation will suffer in the long run. Now, today, with the unemployment at 7.6 percent, with 3 million jobs lost over the past year, and literally thousands of more pink slips going out every month, with hundreds of thousands of new unemployment insurance claims being filed every week, workers need an advocate in the new administration who will stand up for them. They need someone who believes, as I do, that investing in them is investing in our future. They need someone who believes that their Government should work for them during the good times and help them succeed during the hard times. They need someone who will be their voice in every economic recovery discussion.

As we all work very hard to help our economy recover and grow again, I believe three things are very clear: First, we need to create new jobs and help Americans who are out of work or underemployed find employment that ensures they are able to stay in the middle class.

Secondly, we need to help low-skilled and low-earning workers get the skills they need to find family wage jobs in healthy industries, so they can become part of the middle class.

And, third, we need to make smart investments that will create jobs, increase worker training, and make us more productive and competitive in the global economy. I am confident that as Labor Secretary, HILDA SOLIS will join me in working to reach those goals.

Our working families deserve a workforce system that is innovative, that is modern, and can meet the needs of the millions of unemployed and underemployed American workers. I am confident she is committed to making the reauthorization of our Nation's workforce system a top priority of her first year.

I look forward to working with her to help ensure families can balance the competing needs of work and home by expanding job-protected leave and other family-friendly work policies.

To be fully productive, workers need to know that their employers and their Government are doing everything they can to ensure they are safe and they are healthy on the job.

Finally, I look forward to working with her to make OSHA and MSHA proactive agencies again where the health and the safety of our workers is their first priority. We have a lot of big challenges ahead of us in this country, but we also have a very big opportunity.

I know that together we can help our workers access training for 21st century careers, including the emerging green jobs we hear so much about; we can help our workers balance the needs of home and careers and help them keep safe on the job. We can work to protect their rights to organize and secure a better economic future for themselves; and, ultimately, we can help our working families improve their quality of life.

Now, more than ever, workers deserve a leader who is dedicated to seeing them succeed. I look forward to working with Secretary SOLIS and the Department to do that. I encourage all of our colleagues to support this critical nomination.

I yield the floor.

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