Julie Su’s Nomination to Head DOL Advances From Committee

Julie Su, President Joe Biden’s nominee to be the next Secretary of Labor, replacing Marty Walsh, advanced today from the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions by an 11 to 10 vote along party lines.

Su, currently the acting secretary, must now be confirmed by a vote of the whole Senate. No Republicans have yet supported her confirmation publicly, and Senators Kyrsten Sinema, I-Arizona, and Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, have not come out for or against Su’s confirmation Additionally, Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-California, is reportedly recovering from an illness and is away from the Capitol. With those three votes in question, it is unclear if Democrats, with 48 Senators and three who caucus with them, have the votes to confirm Su on a pure party-line basis. A floor vote has yet to be scheduled.

During a HELP Committee hearing last week, Republicans challenged Su’s record as California Secretary of Labor, a position she held previously. Specifically, they challenged her responsibility for unemployment fraud that occurred in California during the pandemic and her implementation of independent contractor definitions in California.

During the same hearing, Su commented that proposed regulatory guidance for SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 provisions will be coming out in a “timely manner” and indicated that creating the “Lost and Found,” a database of plans to match old plan accounts with missing, lost or non-responsive participants and beneficiaries, could be an early priority for the department. SECURE 2.0 requires the DOL to create such a database by the end of 2024.