Members of Congress told Julie Su to resign at a committee hearing on Wednesday amid criticism of her illegitimate tenure, regulatory overreach, and long pattern of obfuscation.
Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su appeared before the House Committee on Education & the Workforce at an oversight hearing about the Department of Labor’s (DOL) budget request for Fiscal Year 2025, fittingly held on the socialist-inspired “International Workers’ Day.” The Biden administration’s request includes an increase of $318 million for DOL, ballooning the department’s budget to $13.9 billion.
Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) opened the hearing by condemning Su’s extended tenure as Acting Secretary: “Today marks the 417th consecutive day in which you have led the Department of Labor (DOL) as acting secretary without the constitutionally required Advice and Consent of the Senate. In effectively abrogating the Senate nomination process, the Biden administration has treated the Constitution as but a footnote. That is unacceptable,” said Rep. Foxx.
In her time as Acting Secretary, Julie Su put forth a new independent contractor rule which threatens to reclassify millions of workers, forcing them into W-2 employment status or out of work entirely. This sweeping rule change was an element of focus at the hearing on Wednesday.
Despite Su’s assertions that DOL “take[s] the comment period very seriously” and does not “approach it with predetermined outcomes,” Congressman Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) called out the department’s failure to respond to comments that disagreed with their proposed independent contractor rule.
“The department has received several thousand public interest comments from independent workers raising concerns about the destruction of jobs from the new rule,” said Rep. Wilson. “The department chose to ignore many of the comments in the final rule by stating, ‘The Department of Labor does not believe there will be any job loss from the new rule.’ However, neither the rule nor the background materials produced by the department during the rollout for the final rule provides any backing as to the status of creation or destruction of jobs.”
Su failed to provide a direct response to Congressman Wilson, instead pivoting to discuss the number of jobs that have been recovered as the country exited the COVID-19 pandemic. In response to later questioning from Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), however, Su falsely claimed that the rule does not “in any way prohibit flexibility.”
In reality, the DOL rule greatly restricts flexibility for workers and is likely to cause severe job losses. A recent study from the Mercatus Center which analyzed AB 5, Su’s analogous independent worker reclassification effort from her time as California’s Labor Secretary, found that self-employment decreased by 10.5 percent and overall employment decreased by 4.4 percent for affected occupations as a result of the law.
Frustration with Su’s evasiveness in response to basic questions came to a fever pitch in a fiery exchange between the Acting Secretary and Congresswoman Lisa McClain (R-Mich.), who asked four separate times whether Su had ever owned a business. Su refused to provide a straightforward answer, which Rep. McClain said is “exactly the reason” Su has so far failed to gain confirmation in the Senate.
Congressman Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) provided the closing statement for the committee’s majority.
“Acting Secretary Su, I’m going to be blunt: It’s time for you to step down,” he said. “Let’s do the right thing. It’s time for you to resign, and we’ll get a new Secretary who can go through the process and be confirmed by the Senate. That’s what the American people deserve, that’s what American workers deserve.”
As stated by Congressman Kiley and several others throughout the hearing, it is indeed long past time for President Biden to withdraw Julie Su’s nomination and end her attacks on worker freedom.