Congresswoman Solis’s confirmation is held up – it breaks my heart.
Oh the gnashing of teeth and the wringing of hands that must be taking place right now in the ivory towers of the union bigwigs, and the White House at the news that the confirmation of Congresswoman Hilda Solis for Secretary of Labor has been held up. Whether or not she is qualified for the position of Secretary of Labor isn’t so much an issue for as her obfuscation when she was asked about her support of the Employee Free Choice Act. Instead of laying it out for the committee she chose to word parse and pretend that she had formulated no opinion, since the Administration (i.e. President Obama) hadn’t “taken a stance”.
She wanted to act as though she was not one of the co-sponsors of record for the Employee Free Choice Act, and that the other co-sponsor was of course then-Senator Obama; and let’s not forget his campaign promise to sign the Employee Free Choice Act into law if it came to his desk. So with all this knowledge, Solis wanted her questioners to somehow believe she had no opinion. Oh and did I mention that she is on the Board of Directors and Treasurer of a group known as American Rights at Work, a group devoted to the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.
As I use to tell my children when it was obvious they were attempting to pull the wool over my eyes – does Congresswoman Solis think that we’re stupid? An honest, and of course a completely uncharacteristic trait of most Washington insiders, would have been to make a clear distinction between what she as a Congresswoman and a representative of a group of constituents believed in and what she as a potential Secretary of Labor who must work with both business and labor leaders might be expected to believe in and how that might impact how the Secretary would do her work. But no, this was not to be, instead she sat there and said she had no opinion. Would such a lame excuse have been tolerated from let’s say fervent pro-business, anti-labor Congressperson been accepted – of course not. But then again I think that those individuals in Obamaland expect everyone else to simply buy their rhetoric without questions and we all know what road that can take people down.
If Solis wanted us to see her as an upstanding and ethical person she would have been brutally honest with the committee and explain how she would be able to put those earnest feelings into a context where they could be integrated into whatever policies the Administration championed and what ever laws Congress passed. Too bad she had to play the politician card, and too bad the Obama Administration showed the American people that the ”Hope and Change” President Obama promised to bring to America didn’t begin when he took the oath of office and apparently has yet to be implemented.
