Press Releases

WASHINGTON - Today Senator Lee voiced his opposition to the nomination of Thomas E. Perez to be U.S. SEcretary of Labor. The full remarks of the speech as prepared for delivery can be found below:

I rise today to voice my strong opposition to the nomination of Thomas E. Perez to be U.S. Secretary of Labor.

There is no shortage of reasons why Mr. Perez should not be confirmed.  Several of my colleagues have come to the floor to discuss a number of troubling facts about Mr. Perez’s professional history, each one of them reason enough to disqualify his nomination.

Mr. Perez has abused his position as Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice.  Rather than seek out and expose instances of racial injustice, Mr. Perez has turned the office into his own personal tool of political activism. 

For example, a report issued by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General found that during Perez’s tenure at the CRD, employees harassed colleagues for their religious and political beliefs.

And, despite having little if any evidence of racial discrimination, Mr. Perez has repeatedly opposed the efforts by states to ensure the integrity of their elections. Under his direction, the Civil Rights Division has pursued frivolous lawsuits against voter ID laws, ignored statutes that require states to purge ineligible voters, and slow-walked attempts to protect the voting rights of military members.

While head of the CRD, Mr. Perez’s unit also used spurious and misleading claims to allege racial discrimination and selectively enforced laws to target unfavored groups.

Most troubling, Mr. Perez has willfully disregarded a lawful subpoena from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to produce documents relating the use of his non-official email account for official purposes.  According to the Chairman of that Committee, “Mr. Perez has not produced a single document responsive to the Committee’s subpoena” and “remains noncompliant.”

At a minimum, this is a basic violation of the rule of law and impedes a fundamental function of the legislative branch to provide oversight of the administration.

Anyone showing this type of willful disregard for the law and ambivalence toward America’s essential principles of democracy should not be considered for a top post in any administration.   

WASHINGTON – Today, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) responded to the Obama administration’s announcement that it would selectively enforce certain areas of ObamaCare:

"Delaying the employer mandate and exchange verification rules is the latest and most damning admission by the administration that ObamaCare was poorly crafted, remains unworkable, and, if implemented, will hurt American families, businesses, and our economy. The only solution is to fully repeal ObamaCare and start over with a more sensible, practical approach to fix our health care system.
 
"Short of full repeal, however, those of us who care about the health care and security of the American people still have a duty to act. If the president has decided he won't enforce his law as it is written, then Congress should not fund any further implementation of it at all.
 
“It is fundamentally unfair for President Obama to exempt businesses from the onerous burdens of his law, while forcing American families and individuals into ObamaCare’s unsound and unstable system.
 
“This administration has chosen to put its own political preferences and the interests of various government cronies ahead of the American people. Republicans in Congress must now stand up for the individuals and families who do not have the money, lobbyists, and connections to get this Administration’s attention.
 
"And we should do so using one of the few constitutional powers Congress still guards – its power of the purse. As long as President Obama selectively enforces ObamaCare, no annual appropriations bill or continuing resolution should fund further implementation of the law.
 
“Last week’s admission by the administration means that after three years of preparation and trial and error, the best case scenario for Obamacare will be rampant dysfunction, waste, and injustice to taxpayers and working families.
 
“If congressional Democrats want to oppose appropriations bills without additional ObamaCare funding, shut down the government, and side with the President and big business against the American people, then it's their choice. But three years in, even the president himself has now admitted that ObamaCare won’t work. The only responsible choice now is to protect the country from ObamaCare's looming disaster, start over and finally begin work on real health care reform.”