On a Capitol Hill morning otherwise dominated by Gorsuch hearings, the deafening drip of surveillance revelations, and a possible health care upset, one much quieter event might have presaged what normalcy may, one hopes, come. Alexander Acosta, Labor secretary-designate number two, answered queries from senators on the Senate Committee for Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) about his career’s few notable snarls and his unwillingness to play politics. Mostly, though, he pledged to protect the country’s evolving workforce fully and fairly. An image of steadiness and stable moral standard emerged—a reassuring picture of boring and upright governance, in other words. Yes, that’s still a thing.
The 48-year-old Acosta—”Alex” to his friends Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, who introduced him—casts an almost absurd contrast to the president’s first pick, Andrew Puzder. The just recently resigned fast-food CEO of Carl’s Jr. fame saw his nomination for the post crash and burn last month, amid news of a complicated history of spousal abuse allegations and the revelation he employed an illegal immigrant he paid in cash.
Acosta, plucked from his perch as dean of Florida International Law School, served on the National Labor Relations Board, as an assistant attorney general, and U.S. attorney for Miami under the second President Bush. Some committee Democrats, an ensemble perhaps best remembered for their theatrical assault on Betsy DeVos, seemed a little disappointed they didn’t get the chance to grill Puzder. Acosta would have to do, and it just wasn’t the same.
Ranking member Patty Murray made sure to get some extra airtime for remarks she’d prepared against Puzder. “I was very surprised”—an exciting variation on her go-to “disappointed“—”that President Trump selected Andrew Puzder; asked the CEO who built his career on squeezing workers as his first Secretary of Labor.” She even added a sociological read on those Carl’s Jr. ads: “Marketing campaigns with signals it’s acceptable to objectify and marginalize women in the workplace.” Puzder was really a gift to the Democrats. He supports the automation of industry, an existential threat to the human workforce. And he’s publicly disapproved of employer restrictions like the minimum wage. Murray wouldn’t pass up the chance to scold him from the bench, wherever he was Wednesdaymorning.
Acosta, on the other hand, has a good-governance bearing and background that suggest he’s someone other than Trump’s carefully considered pick. Still, “Just because Trump’s first Secretary of Labor was deeply unacceptable, that doesn’t mean we should lower our standards”—you’re not off the hook yet, young man, Murray might as well have said.
She pointed out that when Acosta oversaw the civil rights division of the Justice Department, an employee of his “inappropriately considered political and ideological affiliations” in filling non-political posts, politicizing the selection of “career employees,” as they’re commonly known. “It happened under my watch,” he said, “and I deeply regret it.”
And to get at his other scandalous association, Senator Tim Kaine read from that morning’s Washington Post: An article, which has since been updated to include Acosta’s testimony, focused on a deal he, then a federal prosecutor, made with Jeffrey Epstein in the early stages of Florida’s case against the billionaire sex-offender. Acosta could not “discuss the details of the case” but noted that the deal in question took place before more victims had come forward and that the Department of Justice’s involvement at that stage led to a harsher sentence, “based on the evidence,” than what Epstein would have otherwise received.
Veering back to the fate of a federal agency nearer at hand, Wyoming senator and Republican Mike Enzi brought up a popular Labor Department practice the Obama administration had made its own. They’d replace “opinion letters,” publicly available explanations of the law to help employees and employers comply, with “administrators’ broad interpretations”—and only seven of them throughout Obama’s years in office. Previous administrations tended to release dozens in a single year. Encouraging the restoration of an opinion letter system would mean scrubbing this symptom of Obama-era arrogance from agency practice, in other words.
And Senator Elizabeth Warren, on the other hand, asked Acosta for his support of an Obama-era department rule that Trump has precisely targeted for review via executive order. His refusal to offer her his personal opinion on the Obama administration’s fiduciary rule—an investor protection that would take effect next month if not for Trump’s review order—apparently convinced Warren, finally, that she could not and would not support him. “If you can’t give me straight answers, not hide behind an executive order, but your views on this, and commit to stand up for workers on these obvious and very important issues, then I don’t have any confidence that you’re the right person for this job.” Warren’s flustered pout (more a rote than profile-raising piece of theatre, really) set up a characteristically sensible riposte from Chairman Lamar Alexander: “I wouldn’t have any confidence in you for the job if you did answer the question that way.”
Shortly thereafter, Murray entered 15 letters of concern (but not “surprise,” that was for Puzder) to the record for consideration. And Alexander entered 19 letters of support, from business groups and some labor unions: “Does that mean I’ve trumped you?” The rippling laugh that followed rounded out an unlikely sense of ease.
