Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I rise today to voice my strong opposition to the nomination of Thomas E. Perez to be the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor. Simply put, there is no shortage of reasons why Mr. Perez should not be confirmed as our next Labor Secretary.
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 him for this nomination. I would like to discuss a few that are of significant concern to me. Without question, Mr. Perez has abused his position as Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. 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, something that office was never meant to accomplish.
For example, a report issued by the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General found during Perez's tenure at the Civil Rights Division employees harassed colleagues for their religious and political beliefs. Despite having little if any evidence of racial discrimination, Mr. Perez has repeatedly opposed efforts by States to ensure the integrity of elections.
Under his direction, the Civil Rights Division has pursued frivolous lawsuits against State voter ID laws, has ignored statutes that require States to purge ineligible voters from their voter registration rolls, and has slow-walked attempts to protect the voting rights of our military members, our brave men and women serving in uniform for the United States.
While head of the Civil Rights Division, Mr. Perez's unit used spurious and misleading claims to allege racial discrimination and selectively enforced laws to target certain groups.
Most troubling, perhaps, was the fact that Mr. Perez has woefully disregarded a lawful subpoena from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to produce certain documents relating to the use of his nonofficial e-mail 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. It 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 representative government should not be considered for a top post in any administration.
I therefore strongly advise my colleagues not to support this nominee and to raise similar objections whenever someone comes up and is nominated by this President or any President who possesses and displays these characterizes that are so troubling.
I yield the floor.
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