Nomination of Hilda L. Solis, of California, to be Secretary of Labor--Continued

Floor Speech

NOMINATION OF HILDA L. SOLIS, OF CALIFORNIA, TO BE SECRETARY OF LABOR--Continued -- (Senate - February 24, 2009)

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Mrs. BOXER. Thank you very much, Mr. President. I am going to speak about Hilda Solis, someone I know very well, and someone I am very proud of.

I could not help but hear the comments of Senator Sessions about this borrowing, and I do not know where Senator Sessions has been over the past 8 years, when we saw the debt go from $5 trillion to $10 trillion. And that was George Bush's program, supported by the Republicans. It went to Iraq. It went to tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

All of a sudden, there is this newfound worry because we believe it is time the American people, who work for a living and who are struggling, get a hand out of this recession.

As we will hear tonight from our new President, he understands that there is a time to stimulate this economy and then, of course, in the long term, as we Democrats did under Bill Clinton, get back to a balanced budget.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, will the Senator from California yield?

Mrs. BOXER. In a moment.

We did it. We did it without one Republican vote. We passed the Clinton budget. I have the names of the Senators. I was fortunate enough to have a good researcher give me those. What they said when we passed that budget--we passed that budget under Bill Clinton because Al Gore, the Vice President, broke a tie. We couldn't get one Republican vote. And here is what they said, to a person: This budget is going to set us on the course of a recession. This budget is going to set us on the course of deficit spending. Guess what. They couldn't have been more wrong. That budget set us off on a course of the best economy known to humankind in peacetime--23 million new jobs and a balanced budget with a surplus. I remember looking at my children--because the debt was on the way down so fast at that time under Bill Clinton and the Democrats--and I said: What are we going to do? We can't buy Treasury bonds. There won't be any more. We won't have to borrow anymore. So it is extraordinary to me that my colleagues come up here now and they say: We can't spend this money.

Yes, it is true people are hurting. My State has over 9 percent unemployment. There are pockets, I say to my friends, of 18 percent unemployment. I think the American people know there are no panaceas here. They know it is going to be hard. They know we may make mistakes, but they also know this: They want us to present hope to them--hope. Frankly, I wish to be associated with hope, not nope: Nope, we can't do this; nope, we can't do that; nope, it would be better not to do this. The American people--and I see what they are saying to people who ask them--are patient, and they know it is going to take some time. Yes, we may have to inject some funds into this economy because $1 trillion was lost out of this economy due to the recession. So yes, we are, in fact, injecting hope into this economy. We will pay it back. We will get back onto a balanced budget. We will do it in time, and we will do it responsibly.

I am happy to yield to my friend without losing my right to the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from California for allowing me to interrupt. Most Senators, a lot of times, don't like to do that. She is a good advocate on the floor.

I would just say that we need to get away from the political situation. As I showed in my chart, I would note to the Senator, the Bush administration had the largest debt since World War II in 2004 and was rightly criticized for that. After going down for 3 years, when we sent out the checks last year, it jumped to $455 billion, and we got not much for it. This is $1.3 trillion this year, $1 trillion the next year, $632 billion the next year, according to the Congressional Budget Office scoring. So I think this is a quantum leap higher than the deficits we saw in previous years.

I know we are in a difficult time. I would just say I hope my colleagues will share President Obama's commitment to deal with the long-term structural problems we have. He is correct on that. He has a commitment to quit using gimmicks, which we have been using in the Senate too often to mask how big the deficit is. Those are good steps, but sooner or later we are going to need to reduce spending.

I thank the Chair.

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I will take that as a question: Do I support President Obama's commitment to wrap his arms around the deficit and to do it with us, Republicans and Democrats? You bet I do, because I did it before under Bill Clinton. Unfortunately, then, we couldn't get one Republican vote. I praise my friend for showing the deficits under George Bush. I do. But I have to simply say--and this is a fact, this is a proven fact--that we didn't hear much from that side of the aisle when we had an open checkbook for Iraq. In fact, we didn't hear anything. They kept it open. We didn't hear much when they kept giving tax breaks to people who earn over $1 million, and that is what got us into this fix.

Right now, as a temporary measure, yes, we are going to have to spend some. As I know President Obama will lay out tonight, he wants to jolt and jump-start this economy. We are going to do it.

I am so proud we were able to reach across party lines in this Senate and get three Republicans to join us. I am so pleased that in my home State, we got six Republicans to join the Democrats and pass a budget there because when I went home--I went to Sacramento, our capital, and they were in deadlock. I think one of the things that helped me and others make the case was that we had to put party aside. We had to put ideology aside. We had to put egos aside. We did it with the stimulus bill because we only had three options there and they only had three options for the budget in California.

One option is do nothing and be the party of nope instead of the party of hope. Do nothing. Do nothing. Well, when you do nothing, that is not a passive act. Doing nothing is, it seems to me, a hostile act. It is a hostile act on the working families of this country and of my State. So doing nothing, I believe, is irresponsible.

Now, the other thing one could say in light of the stimulus or a budget one doesn't like is: I want to do it my way. My way or the highway. Here is my bill. I have written it. It is great. I have the perfect solution. Well, clearly, I am going to be able to write the perfect bill for me. My friend from Delaware can write the perfect bill for him. My friend from Georgia, I know he can write the perfect bill for Georgia. They love him there, and he would reflect everything they want. But at the end of the day, it doesn't work that way. That is also saying nope.

So the only answer, it seems to me--the only answer--is for us to compromise. That is what we did on the stimulus. That is what my State Republicans did, six of them.

By the way, they got censured by the party in my State. I just can't believe it. I just can't believe it. There was anger because they said they would never raise taxes and they signed a pledge. Well, you have to understand we are in uncharted waters with this downturn. There are hundreds of thousands of jobs lost every month. We all want to keep our pledges, but once in a while you have to look inside yourself and say: How can I help the people of my State?

So I say to those Republicans here who helped us, I say to the Republicans at home in the State of California who helped us: Thank you, thank you, thank you. Because there are moments when we do have to take a risk in life for the greater good.

I am looking forward to hearing the President tonight because I think what he is going to do--because I have watched him--he is going to give us an honest assessment of where we are as a nation. He is not going to sugarcoat where we are. He is going to tell it like it is, but then he is going to offer hope. He has a lot to say on that because we did get that first piece of the economic recovery bill through, the stimulus bill--very important. I think he is going to show us through the housing plan he has that it is going to help ordinary people. My friend from Georgia is here, and he worked so hard to get a tax credit in the stimulus bill for new home purchases. These are the kinds of things we need to embrace, regardless of political party. I certainly embrace it.

Then he will talk about the banks. Speaking just for myself, I don't want to nationalize a bank. I really do not. If you go back to the Great Depression--I am reading a good book called ``The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days.'' There was a big move not by the President but by a lot of people to nationalize the banks, and FDR said: No, we shouldn't be running the banks. So I am very hopeful that we will be able to do some things by converting preferred stock to common stock, to help get these banks on their feet and doing what they need to do, which is to lend.

I have spent some time talking about our current situation, and needless to say, what we have seen in the past 8 years or so--and especially the past few years--is we have seen a real decline in the quality of life of our working families. Their voices have not been heard enough. That creates an imbalance in our lives.

Everybody talks about the powerful unions. The unions that represent working men and women are representing fewer and fewer, and the voices of working men and women have gotten softer and softer. I think President Obama understands this, and he has given us a voice for working men and women in selecting Congresswoman Hilda Solis to be the Secretary of Labor.

I wish to say to my friends who may not know Hilda as I know her--she is from my State and is an ally and a friend--she is one of the best people you will ever meet. She is one of the most humble people you are ever going to meet. She is one of the most intelligent people. She has knowledge of politics and how to get things done. She knows how to reach out to people who don't agree with her. She has a strong understanding of the struggles of working families because she has seen it in her district in California.

Jobs lost since the beginning of the recession in December of 2007: 3.6 million. Jobs lost in the last 3 months: 1.8 million. The nationwide unemployment rate is at 7.6 percent. In my State, it is 9.3 percent. Long-term unemployed Americans: 2.6 million. That is why the stimulus was so important--to give them a little extra help getting through this nightmare. Underemployed Americans--that means Americans who are working at jobs for which they are overqualified--7.8 million Americans are working at jobs for which they are overqualified. So we can see this is not a recession that is just hitting a few pockets of America; it is hitting hard and it is hitting deep.

Throughout her entire career, Congresswoman Solis has been a forceful advocate for working men and women in California and throughout the Nation.

She was born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley in southern California. She was instilled with the values of hard work. Her father emigrated from Mexico, and he worked as a Teamsters shop steward. Her mother came to the United States from Nicaragua and worked at a local factory.

She was the very first Latina elected to the California State senate. She led efforts there to pass a much needed increase in California's minimum wage. I can tell my colleagues this because I worked closely with her on this issue.

In the 1990s, when she discovered that toxic sites were disproportionately located near minority and low-income neighborhoods, she wrote an environmental justice law to guarantee protections for those communities. For her dedication to this cause, she became the first woman ever honored with the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.

She was elected to represent California's 32nd congressional district in the year 2000. I have worked with her very closely on many environmental issues, on worker issues, and it is a delight to work with her. I have worked with her on veterans issues. Before she got tapped to be Secretary of Labor, Hilda and I sat next to each other on the plane, and she was telling me about an event she had where she holds a fair for the veterans in her community, in her district, and she brings together all of the various entities in the Federal Government that could help those veterans. This is a woman with a heart of gold.

So I am confident that Hilda Solis will turn the many challenges we face into new opportunities for the American people. As Secretary, she will continue to promote policies that will invigorate our economy, protect our jobs, retrain our workforce. She will work for a sustainable energy future, which is going to mean lots of jobs and new technologies. She will ensure safe working conditions. She will enforce fairly the wage and hour laws we have on the books. We don't need more laws on the books; we have laws on the books for wage and hour. She will protect against worker discrimination. She will strengthen the middle class. Yet I think in her way she will make the case that people in the workplace should have a right to be represented.

She will argue that. She also plans to improve skills development and job search assistance for unemployed workers and create new career opportunities for at-risk youth and our military heroes, as I mentioned.

I am so thrilled she was picked for this job. I was very surprised because I had no clue President Obama was going to tap her. But when he did, I said to my family that this is a great choice. I think as Members of the Senate from both sides of the aisle get to know HILDA, they will soon trust HILDA. They will know they can talk to her about any subject, that she will listen, and that she will understand their point of view. After all, this is a woman who has been in elected office and she understands, as we all do, that there are differing viewpoints. She is not going to come in there and say: It is my way or the highway, Senator, so don't bother explaining to me. She will work with Senators. I know it because I have worked with her.

If anybody needed a personal recommendation for Hilda Solis today, I hope they will trust me because you know me, and I don't stand up for every nominee, but I am so proud to stand for this one. I urge each and every one of my colleagues--Republicans, Democrats, Independents--to please support her nomination.

I thank my friend from Georgia, who I know has been waiting. I yield the floor.

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