Solis committee vote moves ahead

President
Barack Obama’s nominee for labor secretary will finally receive a committee
vote late Wednesday afternoon.

After
weeks of delay, the nomination of Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.) will be voted on
by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee. The
executive session is tentatively scheduled for 5 p.m., according to a committee
notice sent to aides.

{mosads}“After
consultation with Ranking Member [Sen. Michael] Enzi [R-Wyo.], Chairman Kennedy
is pleased that the HELP Committee is ready to move forward with a vote on the
nomination of Secretary-designate Hilda Solis. Committee members are
expected to meet briefly this afternoon, either during or immediately following
floor votes, to approve her nomination and send it to the Senate floor for
final congressional consent,” said Anthony Coley, spokesman for Sen. Edward
Kennedy (D-Mass.), the committee chairman.

Solis
was the first of Obama’s nominees to testify before the Senate in early
January. But concerns about her evasive answers about the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation that would allow unions to
organize much more easily if passed, at her confirmation hearing
and her board position with American
Rights at Work, a worker advocacy group, set her nomination back weeks.

The
committee vote was originally scheduled for last Thursday but was abruptly
postponed indefinitely when recently-paid tax liens on her husband’s
auto-repair business came to light in the press.

By
then, unions had grown impatient and soon began campaigning for Solis,
considered a champion of labor, over this past weekend. The AFL-CIO, the
Service Employees International Union and others began pressuring Senate
Republicans who were being seen as obstructing the California Democrat’s
nomination.