Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I want to speak on the nomination, which will occur before the Senate shortly, of Eugene Scalia as Secretary of Labor.

I think it is important to say that as President Trump continues relentlessly pursuing his anti-worker agenda, now, more than ever, we need a Secretary of Labor who will stand up to the President and stand with working families, not someone like Scalia, who is an elite corporate lawyer, who has made his career fighting for the biggest corporations and against workers. We need someone who will fight for strong health and safety protections, not someone who has crusaded to strike them down. We need someone who will hold companies accountable, not someone who used his last position in the Department of Labor to undermine whistleblower protections and fought to get his corporate clients off the hook for workplace harassment and discrimination against workers with disabilities.

We need someone who will fight for workers' economic security, not someone who helped companies get away with stealing their workers' wages and denying overtime pay. We don't need someone who avoids committing to support our efforts to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and close the pay gap and, certainly, not someone who costs working families billions of dollars by fighting to strike down a crucial rule that made sure they could get retirement advice that was in their best interest.

We need a Secretary of Labor, not a secretary of corporate interests. Yet at our confirmation hearing last week, Scalia made very clear that is exactly what he would be by dodging taking a stand for workers and deferring to President Trump's anti-worker agenda.

I have been deeply concerned about his awful record since day one. I strongly oppose his nomination. I urge my colleagues to do the same. Everyone needs to take a long, hard look at who Mr. Scalia fights for and who he does not and think carefully about the message their vote will send to working families in our country.

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